Shoreland Hotel

The Shoreland is a historic hotel building in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. It was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It served as a residence hall of the University of Chicago for many years, before being converted to an apartment building in 2013.HistoryThe Shoreland Hotel was opened in 1926 by Harry Fawcett, who reportedly spent $2 million on furnishings alone. The Shoreland Hotel maintained 1,000 guest rooms over 13 floors, a crystal ballroom, a large banquet hall with a top-notch restaurant and an immaculate lobby with 30-foot-high ceilings. Its terra-cotta exterior featured gargoyles and other elaborate stonework. It hosted countless wedding receptions and parties for Chicago's elite, including a massive banquet held when Amelia Earhart returned triumphantly in 1928 to the Hyde Park neighborhood where she had attended high school. Later, Al Capone was known to conduct "business" in certain rooms. In the 1950s, Jimmy Hoffa kept a room in the hotel and often held raucous union meetings there. As the story goes, one of Hoffa's underlings choked the hotel manager, Maurice Bellows in the lobby after he dared to ask the union boss to pay his debt to the hotel. Marge Bellows, was the Shoreland's owner, making the hotel the largest hotel in the country with a woman in charge, at the time. Another notable resident was Milton Friedman, who occupied rooms in the Shoreland at the same time as Hoffa. Elvis Presley also spent several nights at the Shoreland.