Status Update: LondonHouse Spreading Down Wacker

Written By Editor on April 23, 2015

• London Guarantee and Accident Building • LondonHouse

The London Guarantee and Accident Building

The transformation of the London Guarantee and Accident Building at 360 North Michigan Avenue into the LondonHouse Hotel is well underway. For months we’ve been teased by scaffolding on its exterior, hinting at the magical demolition going on inside. Now we can see the new glass tower addition rising to the building’s west.

The glass tower, designed by friends-of-the-blog Goettsch Partners, fills the space between the historic building and the neighboring ClubQuarters Hotel. This was formerly a surface parking lot, going back to at least the 1940’s.

Hilton, the LondonHouse’s new lodging partner, describes the addition thusly:

The new Modernist tower will host the hotel’s main entrance and feature a gateway arrival lobby leading to the grand second floor check-in lobby and bar. It will also include approximately 25,000 square feet of meeting and pre-function space comprised of a junior and grand ballroom, and multiple board and meeting rooms. The hotel will also have a destination spa and fitness center. At the top of the hotel, the refurbished historic cupola and roof-top dining and outdoor event spaces will offer what Oxford believes will be Chicago’s only tri-level hotel rooftop, with dramatic panoramic views of the city.

The Chicago Architecture Blog’s Daniel Schell lurched by yesterday and as you can see in these pictures, found the steel quickly rising between the two buildings. It’s yet another gap filled in the architectural wall along the south bank of the Chicago River that for some reason doesn’t get the same adoration from architecture writers as the Michigan Avenue “streetwall.”