Virgin Hotels Chicago

A 1920s Bank Tower Reopens as a Hotel

Virgin Hotels Chicago occupies a building that spent its first life as a bank, and it has never quite let anyone forget it. The Old Dearborn Bank Building went up between 1926 and 1928 on North Wabash Avenue, designed by Rapp and Rapp, the architects better known for the city's grand movie palaces, and it operated as a bank only briefly before the Great Depression ended that chapter. Virgin Hotels bought the 27-story landmark in 2011 for a reported 14 million dollars and spent years working through Chicago's landmark review process before opening in January 2015, with Rockwell Group Europe and the Booth Hansen architecture firm shaping a hotel that keeps the building's bones on display rather than hiding them behind drywall.

Why It Works

We chose this hotel because so little of its personality had to be invented. The original oak cigar bar, brass elevator lobby doors, and tiled ceiling all survived the renovation intact, and the former banking hall now does double duty as a restaurant and living room instead of getting demolished for a generic lobby. It is a rare case where a hotel's design story and its actual architectural history are the same story, verified by landmark records rather than merely styled to look old. That distinction matters more than another lobby built to photograph well for a week.

Why This Location

Wabash Avenue puts the hotel in the heart of the Loop, a short walk from the Chicago River, the Riverwalk, and the elevated train lines that circle the neighborhood, with the Magnificent Mile just across the water to the north. It is a location built for guests who want to step outside into the city's financial and theater district rather than a resort-style compound, within easy reach of the Art Institute, Millennium Park, and the Loop's own restaurant scene. Business travelers get a hotel inside walking distance of the Loop's office towers; leisure travelers get the same walkability toward the river and the lake.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: landmark architecture, clubby, unfussy

• Rooms: 250 rooms, including 40 single-room suites and two penthouse suites

• Best For: architecture-minded travelers, business trips with time to linger, pet owners

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the original 1920s oak cigar bar and brass elevator doors, preserved rather than replicated

• Dining: Commons Club, a restaurant and lounge built into the former banking hall

• Amenities: pet-friendly rooms throughout, the Lucy app for room service and in-room controls, a curated collection of books and Chicago memorabilia

• Attractions: Chicago Riverwalk, Magnificent Mile, Loop theater district, Millennium Park

The Banking Hall Behind Commons Club

The hotel's most striking room was never built as a hotel room at all. Commons Club occupies the building's former banking hall on the second floor, now fitted with a full kitchen, a bar, lounge seating, and shelves of curated books and Chicago memorabilia rather than teller windows and velvet ropes. It functions as restaurant, work space, and evening gathering spot at once, built inside a room with proportions no new construction would bother to replicate, under a ceiling height that still reads as a banking hall rather than a hotel lobby.

What the Landmark Review Kept Intact

Because the Old Dearborn Bank Building carries Chicago Landmark status, granted in 2003, the renovation went through formal review before a single brick could change. The result preserved the building's steel-frame structure and light brown brick exterior, along with interior details like the original tiled ceiling, rather than gutting the shell for something easier to build on a tighter schedule. It is the kind of constraint that tends to produce a better hotel than an unrestricted budget would, since the building's own details set the design brief instead of a generic template.

Rooms Built Around Pet-Friendly, App-Run Convenience

Every one of the hotel's 250 rooms, including the 40 single-room suites and two penthouse suites, welcomes pets as standard rather than as a paid exception. Virgin's in-house Lucy app handles the practical side of a stay, from room service orders to pillow requests to adjusting the room's temperature and lighting, leaving the original 1920s details to do the design talking instead of oversized in-room technology. It is a useful split: history downstairs, convenience upstairs, with neither one getting in the other's way.