What guests are saying
What guests love
- The sheer grandeur: a block-long Beaux-Arts landmark with opulent ballrooms and a lobby that recalls the golden age of grand hotels.
- An unbeatable Michigan Avenue setting directly across from Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain, and the Museum Campus, a short walk to the Art Institute.
- A genuine piece of Chicago history — the world’s largest hotel at its opening, host to presidents and a fixture of the city for a century.
What to keep in mind
- A vast historic hotel — grand public spaces, variable room sizes
- Convention-scale property; busy during big events
Best for Travelers who want grandeur and history on Michigan Avenue, with Grant Park and the Museum Campus at the doorstep — and anyone drawn to Chicago’s great hotel heritage.
Summary of guest reviews. Sources: Height, rooms, the making of the building and its later history from the Historic Michigan Boulevard District designation report (Commission on Chicago Landmarks), pp. 36, 37. Hilton Chicago, Commission on Chicago Landmarks, Preservation Chicago. Photography courtesy of Hilton Chicago, used with permission. Details may change over time.
Why this building matters
Opened May 2, 1927 as the Stevens Hotel and designed by Holabird & Roche, this Beaux-Arts colossus was the largest hotel in the world, with 3,000 rooms and an 18-hole miniature golf course laid with real grass on its roof. Later the Conrad Hilton, it remains one of Chicago’s most storied addresses. It stands within the Historic Michigan Boulevard District — the Grant Park streetwall designated a Chicago Landmark in 2002, which Preservation Chicago played a key leadership role in advocating for and creating. Many of these grand buildings, now beloved hotels, might have been lost without that protection.
The Historic Michigan Boulevard District report calls the Stevens “the last of the great Michigan Avenue hotels,” and the numbers behind that are hard to take in. On completion in 1927 it had 3,000 guest rooms, a 4,000-seat banquet hall and a 35,000-square-foot exhibition area — “the world’s largest — and the city’s chief convention — hotel.” It was named for its builder, James W. Stevens (1853–1936), president of a retail, insurance and hotel company.
The scale shows in how it was made. Holabird & Roche had sixty draftsmen working on it. They broke the block-long mass into four towers and scaled the windows and entrances down deliberately, so the building would not read as one enormous slab. The engineering of the great ground-floor rooms was hard enough that the solution was published in Engineering News Record, and The Economist reported the construction contract as the largest ever let for a single structure. When it opened, Hotel Monthly gave it fifty-five pages. The report singles out the Grand Stair Hall: bronze fountains by the Chicago sculptor Frederick Cleveland Hibbard, and a carved plaster ceiling trimmed in gold, centered on a painting of clouds by W. P. Nelson.
“Unfortunately, the triumph of the Stevens Hotel was short lived.” It went into receivership in 1932, and during the Second World War the War Department used it as a barracks and technical school. It was brought back in 1944 to host the Democratic and Republican national conventions in the same season. Conrad Hilton bought it in 1945, though the name did not change until 1951.
Read Hilton Chicago's history on Historic Hotels of America →
Limestone, brick, and the building next door
The hotel is twenty-five stories. Its base and top are sheathed in rusticated limestone in a modified Louis XVI manner, with dark red brick through the floors between.
A twelve-story service building faces Wabash Avenue at 723 South, designed by Holabird & Roche at the same time and connected to the hotel. Carved crowned heads sit above its arched driveway openings. On the roof of the hotel itself there was once an eighteen-hole miniature golf course, laid with real grass.
What the 1980s kept
In the 1980s Hilton committed to a $180 million renovation, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz with Hirsch/Bedner. It retained the original lobby and the great ballroom, and added a parking garage, a health club and a new vehicular entrance.
New suites went up on top of the two center towers, for the views over Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Their modern materials set them apart from the masonry of the rest of the facade, which is how you can pick them out from the street.
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