Residence Inn by Marriott Chicago Downtown/Loop

A Landmark on the Street Chicago Banking Built

LaSalle Street's canyon of early-twentieth-century towers is one of the great unsung architectural stretches in American cities, and the Roanoke Building is one of its more unusual entries. Holabird & Roche designed the original sixteen stories in 1915 for the McCormick family, commissioned as the Lumber Exchange Building; Andrew Rebori added a thirty-five-story tower a decade later. The result is built in a Portuguese Gothic Revival style that sources describe as the only example of it in Chicago — dark, richly worked terra cotta on a street otherwise dominated by limestone and granite.

Why It Works

Both the National Register of Historic Places and the City of Chicago designated the Roanoke a landmark in 2007, and a $140 million restoration using federal historic tax credits converted it into a Residence Inn in 2017 without stripping out what made it worth saving: the vaulted, Palladian black-and-white marble lobby survives, and four bronze bells — the largest inscribed for Leander McCormick and weighing more than three and a half tons — are still mounted in the tower above the guest floors. Few extended-stay hotels anywhere occupy a building this historically serious, and fewer still kept the parts that prove it.

Why This Location

Eleven South LaSalle sits at the corner of LaSalle and Madison, inside the financial canyon that gives the street its name. The Rookery Building and the old Chicago Board of Trade are each a five-to-ten-minute walk south, and the Art Institute and the Loop's theatre district are roughly half a mile away. It is a location built around the Loop's working financial core rather than its tourist attractions, which makes early mornings and weekday evenings quieter here than almost anywhere else downtown.

Fast Facts

• Price: Upper-midrange

• Vibe: Landmark Loop architecture reworked into a modern extended-stay hotel

• Rooms: 381 suites, all with full kitchens

• Best For: Longer business stays, architecture-minded travelers, LaSalle Street financial-district meetings

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The four bronze bells still mounted in the tower, original to the 1920s addition

• Dining: Lobby bar and lounge on-site

• Amenities: Full kitchens in every suite, fitness center, business center, guest laundry, meeting space

• Attractions: The Rookery Building, the former Chicago Board of Trade, the Art Institute, the Loop theatre district

The Only Building of Its Kind in Chicago

Portuguese Gothic Revival is not a style Chicago's Loop otherwise claims, which is part of what makes the Roanoke's terra-cotta ornament worth a second look on the way in. The building's three-stage construction — Holabird & Roche's original sixteen stories in 1915, five more floors in 1922, and Rebori's thirty-five-story tower in 1925 and 1926 — left it standing on rock caissons across three basements, nearly 330,000 square feet in total, a scale that let the 2017 conversion fit 381 suites into a single landmark structure without feeling cramped.

Kitchens Behind a Landmark Facade

Every one of those 381 suites carries a full kitchen, which is the actual draw for the business travelers and relocating professionals who make up much of this hotel's guest list — a week in the Loop with a real stove and refrigerator, inside a building most short-term visitors only see from the sidewalk. The approximately 7,500 square feet of meeting space makes it a workable choice for small corporate groups as well, without sacrificing the extended-stay format that defines the Residence Inn brand.

Before You Book

This is a financial-district address, which means it can feel genuinely quiet on weekend evenings when the surrounding offices empty out — a plus for travelers who want calm, a minor downside for anyone hoping for nightlife outside the hotel. Valet parking is the practical option in this part of the Loop. What the address buys instead is one of the more architecturally significant buildings any hotel in this guide occupies, kept largely intact rather than gutted for the conversion.