Silversmith Hotel Chicago Downtown

A Hotel Built for Diamonds, Not Guests

Before it ever took an overnight guest, 10 South Wabash was a working address for the jewelry trade. Two jewelry firms, Gorham Manufacturing and Benjamin Allen and Company, commissioned the building in 1896, and Peter J. Weber of D.H. Burnham and Company — the same firm behind the Fisher Building — gave it a central light court designed specifically to pull daylight into the gem-cutting and silversmithing workshops that filled its upper floors. The hotel that occupies it today inherited both the name and the architecture of a building that was never meant to be one.

Why It Works

The Silversmith Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and sits inside Chicago's own Jewelers Row landmark district, a stretch of Wabash Avenue the city formally protected in 2003. Its Chicago School facade blends late Romanesque Revival massing with Arts and Crafts details — a dark green glazed-tile second story, red brick and terra cotta above it, rounded columns at street level — and that light court still shapes how the building works today, pulling daylight down through its center the way it once lit jewelers' workbenches. At 144 rooms, this is a small, specific hotel built around a building with a genuinely unusual trade history, not a generic boutique conversion.

Why This Location

Jewelers Row runs along Wabash Avenue between Washington and Monroe, anchored by the 1912 Mallers Building a few blocks south, and the hotel sits in the middle of it. The Art Institute of Chicago and Millennium Park are an easy walk east, the Chicago Cultural Center is close by, and Michigan Avenue's shopping is a short walk beyond that. It is a quieter, more specialized corner of the Loop than the big thoroughfares nearby, with a trade history still visible in the jewelry shops that operate on the surrounding blocks.

Fast Facts

• Price: Upper-midrange

• Vibe: Landmark Chicago School building with genuine jewelry-trade history

• Rooms: 144

• Best For: Architecture-minded travelers, Art Institute visits, a quieter corner of the Loop

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The central light court, built in 1897 to illuminate jewelers' workbenches and still shaping the building today

• Dining: Adamus Restaurant & Lounge, contemporary American dishes and handcrafted cocktails

• Amenities: Fitness center, concierge, business center, meeting space

• Attractions: Jewelers Row, the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, the Chicago Cultural Center

Jewelers Row and the Building's Working Past

Jewelers Row dates to 1872 and still functions as a working jewelry district, one of the few trade-specific commercial corridors to survive intact in downtown Chicago. The Silversmith Building was purpose-built for that trade, and its layout — the light court, the floor plates sized for workshop tenants rather than offices — reflects decisions made for silversmiths and gem cutters, not hotel guests. Staying here means sleeping inside a building whose architecture was dictated by a craft, which gives the rooms a shape and a light quality that a purpose-built hotel rarely has.

Adamus, Named for the Trade That Built It

The ground-floor restaurant takes its name from the ancient Latin word for diamond, the hotel's clearest acknowledgment of the building it occupies. Adamus serves contemporary American food built around local ingredients, handcrafted cocktails, and shareable plates, and functions as the hotel's social center in a neighborhood that otherwise goes quiet once the jewelry shops close for the evening.

Before You Book

At 144 rooms this is one of the smaller hotels in this guide, and travelers who want resort-scale amenities or a big lobby scene should look elsewhere in the Loop. Sources disagree by a few years on the building's exact completion date, so treat "1897" as well-corroborated rather than certain to the year. What is certain is the building's purpose-built history, which gives this hotel a more specific, more unusual story than almost any other address on Wabash Avenue.