Four Seasons Chicago

Nineteen Floors Above the Magnificent Mile

The hotel occupies nineteen floors of a 66-story tower at 900 North Michigan Avenue, the seventh-tallest building in the city, with the Magnificent Mile's shopping directly below and Lake Michigan filling the windows on clear days. It is a hotel built at a scale few boutique properties can match, 160 rooms and 185 suites, without losing the sense of a considered, single design vision across public spaces finished in cream, chocolate and rosewood. The rooms and suites pull from 1940s French style rather than a generic contemporary template, favoring chocolate browns, steely greys and oceanic blues that have aged better than most hotel color schemes from any decade.

Why It Works

What earns this hotel its place is the range it covers without compromise at either end. Adorn, the signature restaurant, builds a well-travelled new American menu on Midwest-grown ingredients and wraps it around a 360-degree bar and a live music lounge running jazz, South American guitar and house sets through the week. The spa, renovated in 2023 across 8,000 square feet, is the only one in the Midwest carrying both Augustinus Bader and 111Skin skincare lines. A 9.1 rating across 145 reviews backs up a hotel that could coast on its brand name and instead keeps investing in the details.

Why This Location

Sitting above the Magnificent Mile puts the hotel within steps of Michigan Avenue's full retail stretch and a short walk from the lakefront, a combination few downtown addresses manage this cleanly. The building's height gives upper-floor rooms genuine skyline and lake views rather than the courtyard outlook common to street-level luxury hotels. Guests who want to shop, then retreat nineteen floors above the crowds, will find few Chicago addresses built more directly around that exact rhythm.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: Polished, classic, 1940s French-inflected

• Rooms: 160 rooms and 185 suites across nineteen floors

• Best For: Travelers who want dependable five-star service, families, special-occasion stays

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The 44-foot rooftop pool with a waterfall edge, the same one Macaulay Culkin swam in for Home Alone 2

• Dining: Adorn for new American cuisine and a 360-degree bar with live music, Allium as the hotel's second restaurant and bar

• Amenities: An 8,000-square-foot spa carrying Augustinus Bader and 111Skin, a 44-foot pool and whirlpool, a 24-hour fitness center overlooking Michigan Avenue

• Attractions: The Magnificent Mile, Lake Michigan and the lakefront, Michigan Avenue's shopping corridor

Adorn and a 360-Degree Bar

Adorn anchors the hotel's dining with a well-travelled new American menu built on Midwest-grown and raised ingredients, served around a 360-degree bar beneath a dropped chandelier that makes the room feel more like a scene than a dining room. The live music lounge runs a genuine rotation, South American guitarists, Chicago jazz veterans, house and funk DJs, rather than a single piped-in playlist. Families get their own version of the hospitality: a Martini Man can be requested for the adults, while an Ice Cream Man makes sundaes in-room for children, small touches that scale service across very different guests.

Rooms in 1940s French Style

Across 160 rooms and 185 suites, the design commits to a specific era rather than a vague idea of luxury: 1940s French style rendered in chocolate browns, steely greys and oceanic blues, with classic European architectural details carrying from the public spaces into the rooms themselves. The scale, 345 total keys across nineteen floors, lets the hotel offer genuine variety, from standard rooms to suites, without diluting the design language from one category to the next. Upper floors trade street noise for skyline and lake views that justify the climb.