Pacific Hotel I

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Pacific Hotel I
Location: La Salle, Clark, Jackson, and Quincy streets
Life Span: 1871-1871
Architect: William W. Boyington

The Land Owner, April, 1870
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Real estate circles have lately been somewhat excited concerning the improvement in contemplation on La Salle, Clark, Jackson, and Quincy streets. We therefore present in this issue of The Land Owner elegant illustrations of the Pacific Hotel Company’s new hotel, which, when erected, will equal the great hotels of London and Paris, and be the largest on this continent. When ground is broken for this giant improvement, land in the vicinity of the above named streets will enhance rapidly, and the tendency will be towards centralization in that part of the city.

The Situation.
This hotel will cover about one and a half acres of ground, comprising an entire block, bounded by Clark, Jackson, La Salle, and Quincy streets. This locality is very central, nearly equidistant from the various railway passenger stations as well as central for business. It comprises the advantage of two dissimilar business fronts, via.: Clark street, which is already one of the finest retail streets in the city, and La Salle street, which is the acknowledged Wall and office street. The building has been designed to meet these two business wants and adaptations, La Salle street containing high basement and main floor offices, and Clark street high and lofty stores for retail purposes, each twenty feet wide by about one hundred feet deep, and twenty feet high in the clear.

Architecture and Dimensions.
The walls of the building are to be five stories high above the basement, and include a sixth full story in the Mansard roof, together with the seventh, or attic story in the high Mansard, on three streets. This attic story will be finished into large wards and servants’ dormitories, the wards only to be used upon extra occasions, obviating the usual custom of resorting to filling the parlors and dining rooms with cots. The height of the walls will be 87 feet from the sidewalk, and 140 feet to the top of the pavilion. The centre of the La Salle and Clark street fronts will each be finished with a very prominent projecting portico, two stories in height, with eight unique and massive stone columns, and arched entablature and pediment, above which, will be continued another portico, two stories in height, of four stone Ionic columns attached to the wall, two on each side. Above this will be an attached colonnade, of eight Corinthian columns and entablature, two stories in height, which terminates the height of the walls. This centre prominence will occupy 45 feet in width, and from its varied outline and bold projections, together with its double-Mansard and dome-formed roof, in the centre of which will be a very attractive and well-proportooned dormer window, finished on each side with two caryatides supporting the large crowning arch, which, taken all together, will be the crowning feature of the exterior, through which projection the two main entrances to the office rotunda will be formed.

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At each of the four corners of the grand building there will be four pavilions, 21 feet front, each side of which has a bold projection from the main wall, giving another great relief to the facade. The corners of these pavilions are finished with square antae pilasters, two stories in height, with enriched capitals, each corresponding to the prticoes in the centre projection. This formation continues in altitude, and style of architectural order, and ornamented finish, to the same corresponding height as the centre portion, before described. These pavilions are terminated with lofty square Mansard roofs and double dormers.

The long front on Jackson street is broken by the introduction of two more prominent pavilions, coupled with a higher line of roofing, connecting them in the center, which are topped out with a dome-like Mansard, and rich dormers. Otherwise these centre pavilions are finished in the same style as the corners and each are 24 feet front, together with the intermediate space, making a centre prominence on Jackson street of 98 feet front.

The spaces between the pavilions and the main colonnade projections, are filled with windows trimmed with pilasters and hold projecting caps, supported by brackets and corbels.

Each story has its peculiar outline of curvature in the window openings, all varying on the several stories, but each story preserving the same head-opening, but not the same cap and pilaster. The exterior of the hotel will present many features both striking and novel, and wil be well proportioned, symmetrical and sublimely grand in all its varied details.

The second and third stories have a large number of projecting balconies, supported by ornamental cantilevers and iron brackets. These projections, interspersed as they are, with the other prominent projections, give additional relief of light and shade to the great quadrangle building, which will be 315 feet on Jackson and Quincy, 190 on Clark, and 180 on La Salle streets, with three store fronts and returns of stone around the corner pavilions, on the fourth fronts.

The roofs will be ornamented at the angles and around the cornices with stamped zinc. The dormers and crest work will be the same. The Mansards will be slated with varied figures. The general style of the exterior is the modern French.

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Diagram Showing Ground Plan of the Hotel

The Interior.
Having thus fully honored the exterior, we beg to leave to bow the reader through the grand arched entrance to the vestibule from La Salle street, by which you reach the grand arcade or office rotunda, which is to be 58×100 feet, studded with 20 rich composite columns and corresponding antae’s on the walls. The ceiling of the arcade is divided in to five compartments, richly paneled and corniced. The center portions of the ceiling are arched and bracketed up into the open court above, by which a clear story is formed, and lights through the sides and roof, by which the arcade will be very brilliantly lighted by day and illuminated by gas in the evening.

In approaching the rotunda through the vestibule, you will have left the sublime to behold one of the great attractions and novel features of this grand hotel, viz.: The utilizing of an open court into the office rotunda, but not in the least to the detriment of the rooms surrounding the open court above the ground floor. On the left-hand side of the arcade as you enter from La Salle street, the business office, news and cigar stand, and post office and package clerks are arranged in appropriate compartments.

At the opposite end of the arcade there is a grand marble stairway occupying a width of twenty-six feet, on one side of which is the private office, and on the other side the ladies reception parlor, beside which will be arranged the ladies’ elevator, which will be elegantly upholstered and exclusively appropriated for ladies or gentlemen with ladies. At the other end of the arcade will be a baggage and house service elevator, starting from the basement baggage room. By this arrangement the passenger elevators will be kept free from the luggage or baggage of the house. The grand arcade will also be free from the usual piles of baggage. The baggage room will be but a few steps down from the ground floor, which will be the reception for all baggage as it comes from the various railways into the carriage rotunda, which will be another novel feature incorporated into the design of this hotel.

This carriage rotunda will occupy the second open court and will be closed in by a glass dome one story high, leaving all the rooms above, surrounding the court, entirely open and free to the outside atmosphere. The entrance to the carriage rotunda will be from Jackson street through a double archway, wide enough to pass and re-pass. Passengers will land from this rotunda upon platforms from which gentlemen can go up a short flight of marble stairs to the arcade, and ladies with gentlemen directly to their reception room adjoining the arcade. There is also a commodious entrance for ladies and gentlemen from Clark street, passing the carriage rotunda on either side to the reception parlor or to the office. There will also be a private entrance for ladies from Jackson street directly into the reception parlor. Also a gentlemen’s entrance from Jackson and Quincy streets.

The business office will be in position to command every entrance and exit of the hotel, without shifting position; also in view of the elevators and stairways. There will be six stairways leading from the main floor to the top of the building. The three elevators will also extend to the seventh story. On the ground floor, in addition to what has been enumerated, there will be a large billiard room, bar room, lunch room, barber’s , and gents’ wash and coat rooms, gents’ smoking and writing rooms, telegraph office, together with eight elegant, large offices from La Salle and Jackson streets, and ten large stores on Clark street.

Passing from my the arcade up the grand stairway, you will land in another striking feature, in the shape of a promenade hall, thirty feet wide by 100 feet long, studded with rich Corinthian columns. At the south end of this promenade you enter the salle de recetion, twenty-five by fifty feet, at either end of which, and opening into by sliding arch doors, are two other large parlors. From the promenade you also reach the corridors that conduct you to the grand table de hote, forty-six by one hundred and thirty-five feet, and twenty feet high. Also to the late dinner and tea room, forty-six by fifty-five. Between these two dining rooms the kitchen is arranged, together with all the pantries, etc., etc., and officers’ dining room, occupying a space fifteen by twenty feet, making every department liberal, and on a scale commensurate with the proportions of the house.

The pastry, confectionery, etc., etc., are to be placed in the basement of the building, and connected with the main kitchen by a dummy. The laundry, drying, and ironing departments, together with all the stores for the hotel, will be literally provided for in the basement of the building; all of which have been carefully studied out, classified, and arranged in regular order, providing a place for every nameable object that can be used about this spacious building.

Number and Size of Rooms, etc.
In addition to the public rooms and apartments before mentioned, there will be one hundred private parlors, the largest sixteen by twenty, the smallest fourteen by twenty feet, with suites of bed and bath rooms, and closets attached; which, together with the single rooms, will make five hundred and fifty separate rooms for guests, with additional large rooms in the upper Mansard, sufficient to accommodate three hundred extra guests on extra occasions, without interfering with the regular rooms and patrons of ther hotel.

The Site, Plans, Etc.
The plans of this hotel, both in the original sketches and at later periods, have been shaped by the advice and generous co-operation of the leading hotel proprietors in the United States,and by comparison with numerous existing hotel plans of the best class, this portion of the preparatory work having occupied the attention of the architect and parties in interest for six months past.

The hotel company are peculiarly favored in a site bounded by four streets with its longest and principal entrance front on the south and especially in the fact that this entire magnificent property ready to become the very heart of our best business center is held in but two interests, that of P. F. W. Peck, Esq., on Clark street, and the quarter block of the Northwestern University of Evanston. The entire tract passes to the hotel company on what is virtually a perpetual lease with ten year appraisals, a form of transfer now very largely obtaining in some of our best business property, already covered by some of our noblest business buildings.

The Architect.
With the architect, W. W. Boyington, Esq., these plans, shaped as above, embody the result of his successful professional labor for years. Nearly twenty hotels, some of them, as the Sherman House of this city, the Newhall House of Milwaukee and several other of the very best class having been designed by him.

The Rental.
It has been the aim of this hotel company to take advantage, both of the amplitude and the location of the site, and secure a large amount of rental exclusive of the hotel lease, and this without trenching upon or impairing the hotel accommodations. This has never been realized to an extent never before gained in any hotel in the world; the hotel lease, in this case, being less than half the rental of the structure; the eight stories and twenty-two offices being of the most desirable class, and already, even in this incipient stage, attracting the attention and tenders from the best class of tenants.

The Materials to be Used.
Although nothing definite has been ascertained, yet it is generally understood among architects and the company that material used in this building will be the Ohio building stone, the same as used in the erection of the Drake block in this city. This stone, as is well known, does not disintegrate with the action of time, is entirely durable, and does not discolor like Illinois marble. Age renders it only more massive in its appearance, and, like Methuselah’s wife of old, it is in its prime at the age of five hundred years. The celebrated quarries from which this stone is taken are located at Amherst and Independence, near Cleveland. In a succeeding number of THE LAND OWNER we shall give our readers several illustrations of them, and the massive machinery used in taking out the stone. B. Clough, Esq., has probably the largest quarry of this class of stone in the State of Ohio.

Will It Be Built?
This is the question that will be asked by all who see the scope and magnitude of this scheme. THE LAND OWNER will, for its own sake, in the credit and estimation of its patrons, seek to be conservative in its views and opinions. To set fully at rest the inquiry above, is not our present aim; but the names of the gentlemen actively at work in the enterprise, what they have already done and are doing, show that the answer sought is in the best hands. Not the least promising of the indications already made public, is the fact that, among several leading hotel parties, that have made more or less formal tenders to the Pacific Hotel Company for the hotel lease, the full and formal proposition of Messrs. Sykes, Chadwick & Gardner, now of Willard’s Hotel, Washington, seem to have been favorably received and virtually accepted. These gentlemen stand ready to furnish the hotel at an outlay of half a million dollars, on a ten years’ lease from the first of January, 1872, at which time the hotel can, and probably will be completed.

The Land Owner, March, 1871

THE GRAND PACIFIC HOTEL, CHICAGO—ITS NEW ELEVATIONS AND REVISED PLANS
With its well known enterprise in all matters that come legitimately within its province, THE LAND OWNER hastened to lay before its readers, in April last, magnificent engravings of the then projected Pacific Hotel, from the elevations of the architect, W. W. Boyington, Esq. At that time with us, competing for the credit of its first publication, and an obscure local print also humbly requested the architect to favor its claims, expecting that he or somebody else would pay handsomely for its production. THE LAND OWNER, however, with an enterprise never before displayed in this city, had half a dozen engravers at work on the plates while the publishers was negotiating as to what he could get for the job, and, at its own expense, brought out the illustrations in a most elaborate and artistic manner.

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One week after THE LAND OWNER had been issued, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper came along with a small and very inferior illustration. So great was the excitement at that time over the projected structure that, although we had tried to anticipate the demand by a large issue, we were soon reduced to barely our files. During the year we have been almost in daily receipt of orders for the issue containing the hotel, from all parts of the country, which, of course, we have not been able to fill.

The hotel is now a certainty, a company having been organized, and the foundations of the immense structure, covering an entire block, having been laid last fall. Some modifications of the original plans have, however, been found necessary. The Mansard roof has been laid aside for another, but no less elaborate use, as shown in the engraving. With this change, the plans, after mature study, remain almost substantially the same as those originally drawn, showing the skill and experience displayed by Mr. Boyington. Knowing the interest felt in this great real estate improvement, we re-engrave the edifice from the approved plans in detail, as it will be built.

The Location.
This hotel will cover about one and a half acres of ground, comprising an entire block, bounded by Clark, Jackson, La Salle, and Quincy streets. This locality is very central, nearly equidistant from the various railway passenger stations as well as central for business. It comprises the advantage of two dissimilar business fronts, via.: Clark street, which is already one of the finest retail streets in the city, and La Salle street, which is the acknowledged Wall and office street. The building has been designed to meet these two business wants and adaptations, La Salle street containing high basement and main floor offices, and Clark street high and lofty stores for retail purposes, each twenty feet wide by about one hundred feet deep, and twenty feet high in the clear.

The Architecture.
The details of the architecture were so fully described in our April issue, 1870, that we do not deem it necessary, neither can we afford the space, to recapitulate.

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Chicago Tribune, October 2, 1871

On Clark st., distant one block west (of the Bigelow), is the magnificent Pacific Hotel, the largest hotel in the West, now nearly completed, a monument to the projectors, and a credit to the enterprising citizens of Chicago.

The second Grand Pacific Hotel opened in June, 1873.

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