Indie style and affordable rates are trending in the Windy City
Pin it on The Public, with its pared-down guest rooms and amped-up public spaces, for starting the trend—Ian Schrager did mastermind the new 285-room anti-boutique boutique, after all. Now, a new wave of Chicago hotels has taken up the charge, swapping the big-box luxe of the city's many business-oriented properties for quirkiness and affordability. Out with the pillow menus and supersized spas, in with the personality.
Call it farm-to-table-to–bed: Until last year, Longman & Eagle was just another must-visit Logan Square gastropub known for chef Jared Wentworth's Michelin-starred heartland cuisine, but now you can collect a key from the bartender and sleep off your wild boar and whiskey shots in the inn upstairs. Following through on the restaurant's artisanal ethos, the six guest rooms are all exposed brick with new-school pin-ups (portraits of hipster kids in their underwear) and handmade, modish furniture by Mode Carpentry. They may be flat-out cheap (from $85) but feel far from it.
The circa 1920s Hotel Lincoln hosted everyone from Al Capone to David Mamet before falling into a slump, becoming a Days Inn, and being thoroughly reinvented this year by California-based Joie De Vivre Hotels. The flophouse-turned-fashion house holds 184 preppy rooms (deep blue throws, Houndstooth carpeting, curtains tacked back against the wall like shirt collars), a majority of them look out on Lake Michigan and Lincoln Park. Bike rentals are free and sunrise yoga in the rooftop lounge is scheduled to start this fall.
The Acme Hotel Company pays homage to its Magnificent Mile location with some attempts at posh accents (Egyptian cotton bedding, spa-inspired bathrooms with lots of backlighting) though the general vibe of the 130-room property is more B.Y.O. Doubles are equipped with a fridge and microwave, the TVs can stream media off your laptop, and room service is delivered in a paper bag dropped discretely outside your door, so you won't be caught in flagrante, or worse, fumbling for the tip.