Facing Millennium Park from its Michigan Avenue address, the 1893 Venetian Gothic building that houses the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel was designed by Henry Ives Cobb as a gentlemen's club — a place where Chicago's industrialist elite played billiards and squash while the city rebuilt itself into an architectural argument. The facade, visible in the images, makes Cobb's sources explicit: terra-cotta tracery drawn from the Doge's Palace, paired lancet arches in pale limestone against deep red brick, an almost absurdly ornate street presence sandwiched between towers of glass and concrete. When Commune Hotels converted the building into a 241-room hotel in 2015, the challenge was to honor that institutional gravity without pickling it. Interior designer Roman and Williams rose to that brief with characteristic confidence. The 241 rooms preserve original plaster ceiling medallions worked into elaborate interlocking oval patterns, dark-stained wainscoting with carved Gothic detailing, and original terrazzo floors — all visible in the room shots — then layer in worn kilim rugs, tufted leather chaises, club armchairs in cognac leather, and Moorish-arched stone fireplaces that carry the warmth of a private library rather than the formality of a monument. The Game Room bar, set beneath a barrel-vaulted glass roof supported by exposed brick piers and steel lattice trusses, extends that sensibility toward something more communal: long communal timber tables, globe pendants strung overhead, the Chicago skyline framed beyond steel-sash windows.

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It doesn’t get more Chicago than this 1893 icon of old-world design and good cheer. Originally home to an elite men’s club, the Chicago Athletic Association hotel building is an architectural gem dating back to 1893. Converted to a boutique hotel and urban playground of the same name in 2015, the property sports 240 guest rooms, seven bars & restaurants, the city's first Topgolf Swing Suite, and a downtown location central to Millennium Park, Lake Michigan, The Loop, and more. The Chicago Athletic Association hotel offers an artfully-restored historic stay along with some of the city’s most-lauded dining and drinking outlets. This hotel has received the 2022 Tripadvisor's Travelers Choice Award for consistently earning great reviews and also ranks within the 10% of properties on Tripadvisor.