Virginia Hotel

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Virginia Hotel
Life Span: 1891-1932
Location: 78 Rush, NW corner of Rush and Ohio Streets (600 N. Rush)
Architect: Clinton J. Warren

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Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Virginia Hotel Rush cor Ohio phone North-1692

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Standard Guide to Chicago for the Year 1891

Located at 78 Rush St., North Side. One of the largest and most beautiful private and family hotels in the world. The building is a splendid specimen of modern hotel architecture. This is a high-class house in every sense. Leander McCormack spent the remaining years of his life here. He died in The Virginia on February 20, 1900.

Opening just a few years before the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the 400-room hotel was advertised as “an absolutely fire-proof building and a finished hotel second to no other.” The hotel featured ornate granite interiors decorated with marble statues, separate “gentlemen’s smoking room” and “ladies dining room”, and a room of boilers and dynamos to offer the latest technology: electric lights.

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Virginia Hotel
1893

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1891 Brochure

This hotel was erected by Mr. Leander J. McCormick, so well known from his long connection with the “McCormick” Reaper, and every detail of construction and furnishing has been carried out with the intention to produce an absolutely fire-proof building, and a finished hotel second to no other. How near this result has been reached, the following pages of illustrations will partially show.

The hotel is conducted on the “American” plan, its cuisine and service being unexcelled. It is located in the most fashionable residence section, and yet in such close proximity to the business district that guests can reach the City Hall, Board of Trade, Theatres, etc., in a few moments’ time. To those seeking quiet and luxurious surroundings, “The Virginia” offers advantages possessed by no other hotel in the city. Room Diagrams and rates mailed on application. Special rates to families or to those making an extended stay.

For further information, or the engagement of rooms, address
THE VIRGINIA HOTEL,
Chicago, Illinois.

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Virginia Hotel
Main Entrance

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Rand, McNally’s Bird’s-Eye Views of Chicago, 1893

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Virginia Hotel
Ladies Entrance

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Virginia Hotel
Guest Parlor and Bedroom

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Virginia Hotel
Gentlemen’s Smoking Room

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Inter Ocean, August 25, 1908

Virginia Hotel Transferred.
The Royal Trust company is named as trustee in a conveyance made by Mrs. Fannie E. Galbrath of Erie, Pa., of the Virginia hotel property at the northwest corner of Ohio and Rush streets. The transfer was made to secure a bond issue of $140,000, maturing Aug. 1, 1918, and bearing 5½ per cent interest.

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“The Virginia” is located in the most fashionable residence section, and yet as near to the City Hall as “The Auditorium.”

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National Hotel Reporter, July 31, 1925

Mr.W. E. Defenbacher, president of the Virginia Hotel Company, operating the well-known Virginia Hotel at Rush and Ohio streets, Chicago, makes today an interesting announcement concerning its future management. This announcement is to the effect that Mr. R. H. Weaver has been re-engaged for the position of resident manager at the Virginia.

As most readers are aware, Mr. Weaver held this position for a number of years under the proprietorship of the late Alexander Dryburgh, continuing his duties there for the Dryburgh estate following the death of its lamented head.

Mr. Defenbacher, a hotel man of national reputation, former president for two terms of the Greeters of America, also ex-president of the Ohio Hotel Association, came to Chicago from Ohio and purchased the lease and furniture of the Virginia Hotel, taking possession October 1, 1923.

He found Mr. Weaver there in the position of resident manager and retained him until the end of the year 1923, when Mr. Weaver resigned in order to become manager of the Sheridan-Plaza Hotel, January 1, 1924. This latter position Mr. Weaver filled in an able manner for the period of one year when he retired voluntarily, not caring to retain the position after a receiver had been appointed.

For the past several months Mr. Weaver has been at his country place in Michigan and after a good “resting spell,” is so he says, very glad to return to active duty in the city where he has so long resided and where, we may add, he is greatly lilted and most highly respected.

“Bob Weaver came to Chicago about 25 years ago with his father, the late George B. Weaver, who was manager of the famous Kinsley restaurant on Adams street, than which no finer establishment of its kind has ever been known in this city indeed there is nothing like it here today. From Kinsley’s, young Weaver went, with his father, to the Stratford at Michigan avenue and Jackson boulevard, and that hotel, as conducted by the Weavers, father and son, became noted for its excellent accommodations and superlative cuisine. Mr. Weaver is, of course, well-known to the regular ‘patrons of the Virginia, with whom he has always enjoyed great popularity. Moreover, he is thoroughly familiar with their wants and needs and having been so many years at this well-known hotel, is extremely well fitted both by experience and observation to .make it entirely successful and maintain the high standard which has always characterized it, and which has been studiously upheld by Mr. Defenbacher.

Mr. Weaver will re-enter upon the discharge of his managerial duties at the Virginia “bright and early tomorrow morning, August 1, and shortly thereafter Mr. Defenbacher, with his family, will depart for an extended motor tour, which will carry them as far as New England, which part of the country has never been visited by this virile young hotel man from the “Western Reserve.

The Virginia Hotel has been greatly improved as to interior decorations and furnishings since Mr, Defenbacher became its owner and operator. It was one of the first really high-class combination residential and semi-transient hotels to be erected in Chicago and it has always maintained a leading position,

Its location in the Near North Side business district, also immediately adjoining the fashionable residential section of the city, is most desirable, and the building may be said to equal in all respects, many of the newer structures devoted to hotel use in fact, it is superior to many of them because of its wide halls, high ceilings, extra closet room and other facilities, most adaptable and useful for both residential and transient patrons.

Under the proprietorship of Mr. Defenbacher and the management of Mr. Weaver, there is every reason to believe that the Virginia Hotel will not only maintain the high character which it has always enjoyed, but it will forge ahead to greater success than it has ever before known.

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Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1932

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Virginia Hotel
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1906

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Virginia Hotel
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
1927

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