London House (Chicago)
London House is a 452 room luxury hotel in Chicago located at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, in the London Guaranty and Accident Company Building, 360 N. Michigan Ave.[1][2] It is a hotel of Curio Collection, four to five star hotels from Hilton Worldwide. London House was previously a jazz club and restaurant.
History
The 23 story tower was designed by Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler and built in 1923.[3] The LondonHouse name is an homage to the first owner of the 1923 Beaux Arts tower: the London Guaranty & Accident Co., an insurance company.[4]
It was one of the foremost jazz clubs in the country, once home to such luminaries as Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Cannonball Adderley, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Carroll, Bobby Short and many others.[5]
The club was operated by brothers George and Oscar Marienthal, who ran it more as a steakhouse than a jazz venue; that usually made it a noisy place to hear live music.[6] After jazz had finally waned as popular music, losing out to rock and roll, The London House closed during the early 1970s. The space later became a Burger King restaurant. It is now a Corner Bakery restaurant location.
Several live jazz albums were recorded there, including The Sound of the Trio and The Trio by Oscar Peterson, and After Hours at the London House by Sarah Vaughan, Gin and Orange by Brother Jack McDuff and Barbara Carroll "Live" Her Piano and Trio by Barbara Carroll.
George Shearing and his group often played at this venue in the 1960s, as did Ramsey Lewis, whose trio started out as the house band. On the venue's closing night, a group of jazz luminaries gathered to say goodbye, and Shearing wrote and performed "A Foggy Day in London House."
Crain Communications and other office tenants occupied the tower until Oxford Capital paid $53 million for it in 2013.[4] In Oxford Capital will also build a Goettsch Partners-designed 22-story tower on a parcel immediately west of the structure, which in recent years was a parking lot.[7]
References
- ↑ Official page
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ AJ LaTrace Inside the Upcoming LondonHouse Hotel in the Historic London Guarantee Building February 13, 2015
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 David Matthews LondonHouse Hotel To Open in Landmark London Guarantee Building Next Spring dnainfo.com February 12, 2015
- ↑ curiocollection.com Hilton Worldwide Welcomes Chicago’s “LondonHouse” to Curio – A Collection by Hilton March 05, 2015
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Micah Maidenberg and Ryan Ori, LondonHouse, Hyatt Centric hotels are coming downtown Crain's Chicago Business February 12, 2015
External links
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- Restaurants in Chicago, Illinois
- Jazz clubs in Chicago, Illinois
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- Defunct jazz clubs
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