At 122 West Monroe Street in the Chicago Loop, the 1894 Chicago Athletic Association building — a Richardsonian Romanesque structure with a limestone facade that survived more than a century of the city's relentless self-reinvention — was converted into the Kimpton Gray Hotel when it opened in 2016. The project, undertaken with interiors by Simeone Deary Design Group, posed a specific challenge: how to honor a building whose original purpose was institutional gravitas while making 293 rooms feel genuinely habitable. The answer is visible in the lobby's library lounge, where floor-to-ceiling ebonized bookcases lined with law volumes and tan Chesterfield sofas set against deep lacquered millwork give the ground floor the atmosphere of a private club rather than a hotel arrival sequence. Upstairs, the rooms take a different register entirely — grey grasscloth-textured wallcoverings, cobalt patterned carpets in a bold floral weave, and sky-blue curtains pooling at generous sash windows that frame the Loop's canyon of stone facades. Globe pendants suspended on black cords above the headboards and mint-green lacquered desks introduce a mid-century warmth that keeps the palette from reading cold. The rooftop Boleo bar, visible in the images, pivots to Latin American atmosphere — dark timber bar backed with open spirit shelving, oversized tropical palm fronds framing the space — a studied contrast to the Edwardian formality downstairs that gives the Gray something close to genuine range.

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