The Medinah Athletic Club and Saving the McGraw-Hill Building's Gems

This post is an installment from a trip to Chicago in June with Katrina

Onion dome atop the InterContinental Hotel, formerly the Medinah Athletic Club

One of the most ornate buildings in the city of Chicago is the Medinah Athletic Club, whose Onion Dome demands attention and I'm including a link to a blog post from someone who got to tour inside.  Believe it or not also atop the building is a zeppelin dock because at the time it was thought that travel by blimp was the wave of the future!

Now the Medinah Club is the InterContinental Hotel, but the price for a room was a bit steep so I'll just be content to enjoy the exterior.  The 45 story building was constructed in 1929 as an exclusive men's club for members of the Shrine organization. Of course I love it for those relief carvings which feature just enough Art Deco thrown in to make me swoon. 

The club featured a twenty third floor miniature golf course, complete with water hazards and a wandering brook, a shooting range, a billiards hall, a running track, a gymnasium, an archery range, a bowling alley, a two story boxing arena, and a junior Olympic size swimming pool. Although October 29th of that year would become known as the “Blackest Day in Stock Market History,” it would be another four years before the effects of this financial disaster would force the Shriners to file for bankruptcy. In 1934 they lost their beloved clubhouse, and in the decade that followed the building went through various incarnations, including a brief stint as residential apartments.

Celtic and Mesopotamian motifs of the lion, the fish, and the eagle adorn the common areas, and the lobby's grand staircase also has cast-bronze friezes along the handrail from the original Medinah Athletic Club. I must have missed that entrance so I'll have to search it out when I return.  But, if you look through the window to the left of the lions in the picture below...

You will see where the McGraw Hill Building once stood. The building was constructed by the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company back in 1928 but was demolished in 1998.  Don't panic, they saved the facade and now it is home to The Gwen Hotel.  City Hall and local preservationists demanded the panels be saved at great expense.

The Magnificent Mile is its home, and don't worry lots of shopping there to do if you need more excitement than looking at architecture.

Atlas bears the weight of the world

This 16 story beauty is adorned with those saved panels carved by artist Gwen Lux, hence the new name of the hotel. The link I provided will take you to a site that shows close-up fine art prints of the carvings. Thank goodness these treasures were not lost!

The interior of the newly constructed hotel definitely evokes the original period, I'm glad they chose that direction, some hotels go modern even when they build in something so distinctly historical.

I enjoyed seeing Diana the Huntress included in the representation, it reminded me of when we visited the Biltmore and there was a statue there on the grounds.