New Hotel La Salle, Chicago
c.1910
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WORLD’S BIGGEST HOTEL.
Chicago is planning to build tho biggest hotel in tho world. This is the new La Salle Hotel, to be erected at La Salle and Madison streets. With tho furnishings, the hotel’ will represent an investment ot approximately £700,000, and with the land, which was leased on the hasis ot a value of £500,000, tho total will run up to £1,200,000. The building will be twenty two storeys high, with two basements, and will havo 1172 rooms.
Sunday TImes, Sun 8 Mar 1908
The Main Lobby, Hotel La Salle, Chicago
Postmarked 1910
Publisher: Hotel La Salle
It is the most conspicuous hotel structure in Chicago, being twenty-two stories high, twenty of them being above ground. It is the tallest hotel in the world. Everything in it is of the finest and best. From the sidewalk to the copper cheneau, crowning the roof, the building measures 260 feet and it towers above all other skyscrapers the most conspicuous object in the downtown district. From the lake and surrounding country its shining top can be seen a long distance. It is fire-proof, and the steel frame rests on 105 concrete caissons which extend down to bed-rock 110 feet below the street line.
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It might be of interest to know that it cost $600,000 to furnish this hotel, and that there are 25,000 pieces of furniture in the house, and that it took eighty cars to transport it to Chicago, and that 4,700 pieces of this furniture are upholstered. All the furniture was made from special designs and the patterns destroyed after the pieces were completed. It might be stated that the general line of decoration throughout the hotel is of the Louis XV style, and that even the silverware and the linen were especially designed. The main dining-room, however, seventy-six feet long, fifty feet wide and twenty-five feet high, is finished in the sumptuous style of the Louis XIV period, the Corinthian order being used as the basis. The entablature is molded after the fashion then in vogue, and the capitals of the pilasters are foiled with acanthus leaves. The ceiling has richly molded ornaments and in the center is a large painting suggestive of sky and clouds.
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The laundry is on the twenty first floor, and has a capacity of 60,000 to 75,000 pieces a day. The kitchen, a marvel in its way, was opened August 25.
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The kitchen of the La Salle is equipped with the celebrated Cochrane Dish-washing machines, which wash, rinse, dry and thoroughly sterilize the dishes, with absolutely no chipping or breakage of the finest china. These machines have a capacity of from thirty-forty dozen pieces of china every two minutes and there is no lifting of the dishes during the process of being washed and rinsed, as the dishes stand stationery.
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The gentlemen’s cafe and bar is beautifully executed in oak, with a fumed finish, very heavily and elaborately carved. In the principal dining room on the first floor, the French style is carried out, set off by rich decorations. Among the restaurants in the basement may be mentioned the German restaurant. This room is done in oak, while the basement restaurant proper is done in gray maple with a very elaborate vaulted ceiling. The writing room on the first floor is executed in genuine English oak. The State Suite, one of the most beautiful apartments known to any hotel in the country, has an especially fine dining room done in oak with rich gilding. The parlor in this suite is in enamel in the style of Louis XVI. The Grand Ball Room, the Banquet Room, and the Palm Room, the Ladies’ Reception Room and the various parlors are all done by Hilger & Company, and will equal if not surpass that of any shown in this country or abroad.
Chicago Examiner, 5 September 1909, pp 12-13
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