Hotel Metropole


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Hotel Metropole
Posted by: liz (---.dsl.okcyok.swbell.net)
Date: March 05, 2010 01:15AM

Hotel Metropole
Michigan Avenue at 23rd Street
Architect: Clinton J. Warren, 1891
demolished?
1925 Al Capone established his headquarters in the hotel booking five rooms on the fourth floor.
Capone later added fifty rooms on two floors and a gymnasium.

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: SuperCFL (---.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net)
Date: December 22, 2010 09:13PM

Demolished 1960, I believe. As with the Lexington Hotel in the 1990s, the original Mayor Daley saw it as symbolic of a Chicago era he wanted forgotten, and made sure it went away.

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: bowler (---.chipublib.org)
Date: December 22, 2010 10:39PM

Demolished in the summer of 1975 according to a tribune article. You can access the article in the Chicago Tribune Historical Archive available to any Chicago Public Library patron through their website www.chipublib.org .

I can also email you the article if you like (send me a PM)

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: frworksonpaper (---.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
Date: February 03, 2011 09:08PM

Here is a great photo of the Hotel Metropole in 1909 from the book "Charles R. Childs' Chicago"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49023084@N07/5414649904/

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: Berwyn Frank (---.lightspeed.cicril.sbcglobal.net)
Date: February 04, 2011 02:45PM

I was just looking through frworksonpapers flicker images that came from his book. This reminded me just how amazing his book is on C.R. Childs. If you don't have one please do yourself a favor and contact him through this site and buy a copy. The amount of painstaking work that went into physically and digitaly restoring these images, and the research they did on the buildings, is pretty impressive.

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: daveg (130.36.62.---)
Date: February 04, 2011 03:10PM

The style of the Metropole looks, to me, very similar to the Lakota Hotel which later became the Lewis Memorial hospital.

Thread on this subject:

http://forgottenchicago.com/forum/5/3593

Further reading showed that Clinton J. Warren was the architect for both buildings.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2011 06:35PM by daveg.

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: toddb58 (65.243.234.---)
Date: October 03, 2014 11:34AM

My grandfather, Henry R. Brooks and his wife Carolyn, owned the Metropole in the 1920's. When someone threw a large stinkbomb in the lobby, my grandfather asked Al Capone to kindly find another hotel to live in and he graciously complied.

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Re: Hotel Metropole
Posted by: b.a.hoarder (---.hsd1.in.comcast.net)
Date: October 03, 2014 04:18PM

toddb58 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My grandfather, Henry R. Brooks and his wife
> Carolyn, owned the Metropole in the 1920's. When
> someone threw a large stinkbomb in the lobby, my
> grandfather asked Al Capone to kindly find another
> hotel to live in and he graciously complied.


Who knew that a ruthless thug like Capone could have compassion for the plight of a businessman? And your grandfather deserves our admiration too, the man had chutzpah!

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