This property was also by far the largest of the Shoreline Motels built, with more rooms (301 at opening) than the 11-story former Lake Tower Motel (250 rooms) discussed in a previous article. One of only two Shoreline Motels still in operation as a motel in 2013, the former 50th on the Lake (later TraveLodge, then Hilton Hyde Park, now Ramada Chicago Lakeshore Hotel) opened by Fall, 1958. With new highways being built in the Chicago area and a booming economy, there was strong demand starting in the 1950s for new accommodations to supplement and replace Chicago’s aging hotels along the lakefront. At center, the hotel’s ornate 1920s architecture is cleaned up in a 1951 Yellow Pages ad to look as modern as a new Mies van der Rohe skyscraper.Ībove right, a new Chevrolet Corvette is prominently placed at the entrance to this elaborate, and very old-fashioned, Roaring Twenties-era hotel. At left, it may be deduced that the Shoreland was struggling during the Great Depression from this awkwardly written ad appealing to a budget-conscious renter. These three Shoreland Hotel promotional items from (left to right) 1930, 19 show how the Shoreland, along with many aging lakefront hotels, attempted to keep current with changing times. Left: Chicago Tribune, 1930 Center: Illinois Bell Classified Telephone Directory, 1951 Right: Chuckman Collection, 1954 One of the most venerable hotels south of the Loop was the Shoreland Hotel, built in 1926 and remodeled in the 1930s to keep current in a challenging economy by the highly accomplished but now forgotten architect James Eppenstein. In this, the final article in the series, we examine the four Shoreline Motels constructed in Hyde Park and the South Shore areas.Īs with Chicago’s other lakefront neighborhoods, the long history of transient accommodations in the neighborhoods south of the Loop spans the 1800s until today. As mentioned previously in previous Forgotten Chicago articles here, here, and here, there were a total of 13 Shoreline Motels built in Chicago in the roughly ten year period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.
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