The Langham Chicago ★★★★★

The First Hotel Inside a Mies van der Rohe Tower

Stand on the Riverwalk and look north and the tower is unmistakable: dark steel, bronze tinted glass, a plaza set back from the water, the proportions that made an architect famous. This was Mies van der Rohe’s final American commission, raised in 1971 as IBM’s regional headquarters, and it has been a Chicago landmark ever since. The Langham took the lower thirteen floors and became the first hotel anywhere inside a Mies building. Dirk Lohan, the architect’s grandson, redrew the ground floor and left the travertine walls and granite floors exactly where they stood. You arrive into a piece of architectural history that happens to have a reception desk.

Why It Works

Chicago is a city where the architecture is the reason to come, and very few hotels let you sleep inside the argument. That settled it. Beyond the address, the rooms are unusually generous, starting above five hundred square feet with floor to ceiling glass and separate dressing areas, which is a different proposition from a downtown box. Richmond International handled the interiors and kept them contemporary rather than nostalgic, with bronze accents that answer the building instead of imitating it. Forbes Travel Guide rates the house at five stars, and the service holds up its end of the setting.

Why This Location

The hotel stands at 330 North Wabash, on the north bank of the river where River North meets the top of the Magnificent Mile. Cross the bridge and you are on Michigan Avenue. Walk fifteen minutes south and you are in Millennium Park and the Loop. The Riverwalk runs directly below, the best way to read the city in warm weather and the departure point for the architecture boat tours that explain everything visible from your window. Navy Pier and the lakefront lie east. Both airports are a train ride away, and the Brown and Red lines are within a few blocks.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Modernist, river facing, polished, architectural

• Rooms: Three hundred and sixteen rooms and suites on the tower’s lower floors, all from over five hundred square feet

• Best For: Architecture travellers, couples, anyone stretching a business trip into a long weekend

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The southeast corner rooms, which hold the river, the lake and the Loop in one window

• Dining: Travelle for seasonal American cooking with Mediterranean leanings, under two three hundred bottle wine walls, and afternoon tea in the Pavilion

• Amenities: Chuan Spa with seven treatment rooms, long indoor pool, Himalayan salt saunas and steam rooms, health club, marble and travertine bathrooms

• Attractions: The Chicago Riverwalk, Magnificent Mile, Millennium Park, the Art Institute, Navy Pier

Rooms Measured in Glass

Every room is glazed wall to wall, which in a Mies building means the city supplies the decoration and the furniture stays quiet. Standard rooms start above five hundred square feet, with a separate dressing area and a bathroom in marble and travertine that would count as a room elsewhere. Bronze detailing runs through the scheme as a nod to the tower’s own palette. Ask for a southeast corner if the view matters more than the floor number, and ask high if you want the lake. The glass is the whole point, so the curtains stay open.

Travelle, the Pavilion and the Two Wine Walls

Travelle is the main room, a Rockwell Group design with an open kitchen and two wine walls of three hundred bottles each standing where a partition would otherwise be. The cooking is seasonal and American with Mediterranean leanings, and the bar runs later than the dining room. The Pavilion, off the lobby, serves afternoon tea in front of a fireplace, a Langham habit carried over from London and taken more seriously here than the phrase suggests. Between the two there is little reason to leave the building on a cold evening.

Chuan Spa and the Long Indoor Pool

Chuan Spa works on the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, with seven treatment rooms and a consultation that precedes the booking rather than following it. The indoor pool runs sixty seven feet, long enough to swim properly instead of turning every four strokes, and the health club sits alongside it. Himalayan salt saunas and steam rooms complete the floor. In a city with a serious winter, a pool of that length under cover is not a detail, it is a reason to book.