Pendry Chicago ★★★★

Green Terra Cotta and a Gold Crown on Michigan Avenue

There is a story Chicagoans tell about 230 North Michigan Avenue: that the Burnham brothers drew it to look like a champagne bottle, dark green glass with gold foil at the neck. It is almost certainly a myth, and it has survived a century because the building invites it. The Carbide & Carbon went up in 1929, thirty-seven storeys and 503 feet of black granite, green and gold terra cotta and bronze, the colour chosen to evoke the ancient plant matter that becomes carbon. Chicago made it a landmark in 1996, and the gold crown has been lit after dark since 2007. Pendry opened inside it in 2021.

Why It Works

Plenty of hotels occupy old buildings. Fewer are worth choosing because of one. Here the tower is the reason to book: the proportions of an Art Deco skyscraper, a base of black granite you walk through rather than past, and 364 rooms arranged inside a floorplate never designed to hold them. The conversion was handled as a restoration, which is why the public rooms feel specific to Chicago rather than transferable to any city. Add three distinct places to eat and drink, a terrace on the twenty-fourth floor and a genuine welcome for dogs, and the case holds well beyond the facade.

Why This Location

Michigan Avenue at the river is the hinge of downtown Chicago. The Riverwalk starts below and runs west under the bridges. Millennium Park and the Art Institute are a few minutes south on the same side of the street, and the Magnificent Mile begins across the DuSable Bridge to the north. Architecture river cruises leave from docks within sight of the door, which remains the best way to read the skyline this hotel belongs to. The Loop theatres and the elevated tracks are a short walk west. Everything here is walkable, which is not true of every Chicago address.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Art Deco landmark, Loop polish, rooftop

• Rooms: 364 rooms and suites inside a thirty-seven storey tower

• Best For: Architecture travellers, couples on a city weekend, dog owners

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The gold-leaf crown lit at night, seen from the Riverwalk below

• Dining: Venteux for brasserie hours, Bar Pendry for the aperitif, and Chateau Carbide, the rooftop lounge and terrace on the twenty-fourth floor

• Amenities: Fitness centre, private parking on site, dogs welcome, guided walking and bike tours, live music and happy hour programming

• Attractions: Chicago Riverwalk (below the door), DuSable Bridge and the Magnificent Mile, Millennium Park and the Art Institute, architecture river cruises, the Loop theatre district

Venteux, Bar Pendry and the Twenty-Fourth Floor

Three rooms, three jobs. Venteux runs the brasserie hours and is the reason breakfast and lunch need not involve leaving the building. Bar Pendry sits closer to the lobby and handles the drink before dinner. Chateau Carbide is the one people plan around: a cocktail lounge twenty-four floors up with an outdoor terrace over the Loop, weekend DJ sets and light plates from the kitchen. Book the terrace ahead in summer, when it fills early. In winter the room itself is the draw, and the view does the rest.

What the Burnham Brothers Left Behind

Hubert and Daniel Burnham Jr. inherited a famous surname and spent it on something their father would never have drawn. The Carbide & Carbon is Art Deco at full commitment: a black granite base, a shaft of dark green terra cotta, gold leaf at the crown, bronze detailing at street level. Look up from the opposite pavement and the tower steps back in a way the flat glass around it cannot. Inside, the conversion kept the vertical logic of the original, so lifts, corridors and room shapes still answer to 1929 rather than to a modern hotel diagram.

Rooms, Dogs and the Practical Side

With 364 keys spread up a tower, floor and orientation matter more than category: ask high and west for the river and the Loop. Check-in opens mid-afternoon and check-out is midday, later than most and useful on a Sunday. Parking is private and on site, a real consideration on this stretch of Michigan Avenue. Dogs are welcome, and staff work in English, Spanish and Persian. The hotel also programmes walking tours, bike tours and live music, which is worth reading before booking anything externally.