Richmond House

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Richmond House
Life Span: 1856 – 1871
Location: NW Corner South Water Street and Michigan Avenue
Architect: TBD

D. B. Cooke & Co.’s City Directory for the Year 1859-60

Richmond House

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1870
Richmond House,Richard Somers, propr.) Michigan av nw. cor. S. Water

Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1856

Richmond House, corner of South Water street, 131 by 72, for the Hon. T. Richmond, is in a good state of forwardness, and to be completed next May, leased for a term of years to John Taber, Esq., late of the Lapierre House, Philadelphia—the building is six stories in a height of 82 feet exclusive of a basement 10 feet deep. Both fronts will be of cut Athen’s stone, and of beautiful design. This hotel will be the most magnificent yet erected in the West, being in the New York scale of splendor in everything pertaining to the building and its purpose. The interior arrangement will embrace much that is new in convenience and comfort, to which the present hotels here are strangers: nothing that the liberality of the owner can supply or devise will be omitted to render it complete and entire in every sense of the word. The building will be surmounted by an an immense refreshment saloon. Also, a very large cupola or observatory, from which the most extended and magnificent view of the surrounding scenery, especially Lake Michigan, to which all true lover of nature will resort, and be amply repaid for the little trouble they will be put to in being raised up from the ground in cars worked by machinery, a feature that strikes us as being truly novel, but quite in keeping with the go-a-headativeness of the times, the people, and none the less of Chicago, in particular. Probable cost something less than $100,000. Architects, Olmstead & Nicholson; cut stone, Illinois Stone and Lime Company; mason, N. E. Pstebson ; carpenter, Ira Foote.

Weekly Chicago Times, January 8, 1857

Corner of South Water, street. The Richmond House. This marble palace, (for it is nothing less, was described at length in our article of last year, and we do not embrace its cost, therefore, in our list of this year. The work on it was much delayed, and the house was not opened till September last. It presents the most magnificent exterior of any hotel in the West, and its interior finish is surpassed by none. Wm. B. Olmstead, architect. Kept by Messrs. Taber and Hawks, late of the La Pierre House, Philadelphia.

Handbook for Strangers & Tourists to the City of Chicago, 1866

RICHMOND HOUSE,
Corner of South Water street and Michigan avenue, ranking second to none of the other first-class hotels, is lavishly supplied with every comfort and convenience for the accommodation of guests. It will be remembered by those familiar with the incidents of the Prince of Wales’ visit to the United States, that the royal visitor chose the Richmond House for his sojourn in Chicago. Under the new management of Mr. Somers,formerly of the City Hotel, the Richmond House has been remodeled and refurnished in an elegant style. All the parlors, reception rooms, private parlors, and lodging rooms, are handsomely and richly furnished. The location of the Richmond House is especially advantageous. It is only a few steps distant from the Great Central Depot, and on that great fashionable thoroughfare, Michigan avenue, the most beautiful street on the American continent.

Richmond House

Chicago Evening Mail, January 5, 1871

The closing of that lofty marble-front hotel, the Richmond House, on the corner of South Water street and Michigan avenue, and the sale of the building for conversion into the purposes of trade, illustrates very forcibly how business in Chicago is marching southward. The Richmond, which was opened several years ago, was long the great hotel of the West, the stopping place of all the traveling magnates, and the scene of many festive gatherings. That awful scion of royalty, the Prince of Wales, honored it with his presence, and Lincoln and many other statesmen tarried therein. After the Sherman House was opened in 1860, it began to lose its prestige, and during the war it became somewhat noted as a rendezvous for secession sympathizers. Meantime the city was growing rapidly away from its ancient boundaries, and the retail trade drifted from South Water and Lake streets toward Washington and Madison and further south. The Richmond began to find itself hemmed in by great wholesale houses, and forsaken by the throngs of passers who frequent the retail streets, and gradually it grew out of fashion and out of memory. Its splendid front was seen by few of the casual visitors to the city, and even the citizens began to forget its location and existence. The opening and commencement of new and more costly hotels in more popular quarters told steadily on the decaying business of the Richmond. It fell from a first-class to a second-class and then to a third-class house, and finally was a losing institution. Yet though the hotel business had forsaken it, the location is the center of an enormous wholesale trade and the property found ready purchasers in one of our prominent firms, who will convert it into a “palace of trade.” But its history illustrates very remarkably the rapid changes that are constantly taking place in this rapidly growing city, and hints of what we may expect to see fifteen years hence.

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