Edgewater Beach Hotel
| Edgewater Beach Hotel | |
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Postcard of Edgwater Beach Hotel circa 1916 before the addition of the south tower.
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| General information | |
| Architectural style | Spanish Colonial Revival |
| Location | 5301-5355 N Sheridan Road Chicago, Illinois |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 41°59′1″N 87°39′17″W / 41.98361°N 87.65472°W |
| Construction started | 1916 |
| Completed | 1924 |
| Demolished | 1970 |
| Cost | US $9,000,000 |
| Client | John Tobin Connery and James Patrick Connery |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Marshall and Fox |
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Edgewater Beach Apartments
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The Edgewater Beach Apartments, built in 1927, sole portion of complex now standing
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| Location | 5555 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois |
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| Coordinates | 41°59′1″N 87°39′17″W / 41.98361°N 87.65472°WCoordinates: 41°59′1″N 87°39′17″W / 41.98361°N 87.65472°W |
| Built | 1928 (co-op apartments) |
| Architect | Marshall and Fox |
| Architectural style | Beaux-arts / Historism |
| MPS | Bryn Mawr Avenue Historic District |
| NRHP Reference # | 94000979 |
| Added to NRHP | August 16, 1994 |
The Edgewater Beach Hotel was a resort hotel complex on Lake Michigan in the far-north neighborhood community of Edgewater in Chicago, Illinois, designed by Benjamin H. Marshall and Charles E. Fox. The first section was built in 1916 for its owners John Tobin Connery and James Patrick Connery, located between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan at Berwyn Avenue. An adjacent south tower building was added in 1924. The resort hosted famous movie and sports stars, and later Martin Luther King, Jr. It was also the setting for the celebrity stalking case and shooting, which inspired the book and a movie, The Natural. The hotel closed in 1967, and was soon after demolished.
The Edgewater Beach Apartments to the north were completed as part of the hotel resort complex in 1928. The "sunset pink" apartments complemented the "sunrise yellow" hotel in a similar architectural style. The apartments remain standing and have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Designed by Chicago-based architects Marshall and Fox, the complex was composed of several buildings and recreation grounds. The Main Building, designed in the shape of a croix fourchée ("forked cross"), had 400 rooms and opened on June 3, 1916. It quickly became a success. In April 1923, construction began on a $3,000,000 19 story, 600-room tower addition to the south of the Main Building. The Tower Building, which opened for occupancy on February 9, 1924, had a stepped design, tallest at its center, with lower sections to the east and west of the center. The addition, initially called the Annex, was connected to the Main Building by a large hall known as Passaggio.
The hotel had a 1,200-foot private beach and offered seaplane service to downtown Chicago. When both buildings were initially constructed, the hotel sat 20 feet from Lake Michigan. The 1933 extension of Lake Shore Drive north to Foster Avenue resulted in the creation of a private bathing beach east of the hotel and north of Foster along the Lake Michigan shore.
During its lifetime, the hotel served many famous guests including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Lena Horne, Tallulah Bankhead, and Nat King Cole, and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The hotel was known for hosting big bands such as those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Xavier Cugat, and Wayne King, which were also broadcast on the hotel's own radio station, a precursor to WGN with the call letters WEBH. In the winter months the bands played in the Marine Dining Room and, in the summer months, outdoors on the marble-tiled Beach Walk. On the first floor of the hotel, guests walked on a wooden gangway into the Yacht Club for cocktails. In the early days women were not permitted to sit at the bar.
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