At the corner of Superior Street and Michigan Avenue, where the Magnificent Mile reaches its densest concentration of retail and civic ambition, a limestone-clad tower completed in 2001 by Lucien Lagrange Architects established the Peninsula Chicago as one of the few new-build luxury hotels in America to hold its own against the century-old grand dames of the city's hospitality tradition. The building's neoclassical massing — projecting cornices, grid-patterned stone, a setback crown visible from the exterior images here glowing amber against the Chicago dusk — defers to the scale of its Michigan Avenue neighbors while the rooftop bar level announces itself with a purple-lit contemporary transparency that makes no such concessions to the past. The 339 rooms carry the Peninsula's signature integrated-technology headboards in dark-stained wood with inset upholstered panels and ivory linen, navy accent cushions grounding the otherwise pale palette of wool carpet and cream walls. Botanical wall panels, visible in the guestroom images, introduce a lightness that keeps the interiors from settling into the corporate neutrality that plagues comparable properties. The bar space — checkerboard marble floors in olive and ivory, plum velvet club chairs, brass pendant columns descending from a tessellated gold ceiling, and a painted Chicago skyline mural behind the counter — has a quietly theatrical conviction. The mid-building spa pool, lined with floor-to-ceiling steel-framed windows overlooking the Loop, channels the serene geometry of a private natatorium suspended twenty floors above the street.

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