Blackstone Hotel

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Blackstone Hotel in 2004

The Blackstone Hotel is located in Chicago at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo Street. It was built from 1908-1910 and designed by Marshall & Fox. The hotel was named for Timothy B. Blackstone, the founding president of the Union Stock Yards. Blackstone was also President of the Chicago and Alton Railroad from 1864 to 1899,

The hotel and the adjacent Blackstone Theatre were built on the former site of Timothy Blackstone's mansion, after his death. It was built by Tracy C. Drake and John B. Drake II, the sons of his former business partner and hotel magnate John Burroughs Drake. These same sons were the developers for the Drake Hotel. The elder Drake had been a Director in Blackstone's Chicago and Alton Railroad.^[1]

The Blackstone was considered one of Chicago's finest luxery hotels, and more than twenty-six U.S. Presidents stayed at the hotel, ranging from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton.^{(dubious; discuss)} The hotel has a special room designed for use by presidents which was separated by the rest of the hotel by hollowed out walls in which the Secret Service could operate. In 1920, Warren G. Harding was selected as the Republican candidate for the Presidency at the Blackstone. Although the convention was being held at the Chicago Coliseum, a group of Republican leaders met at the Blackstone on the night of June 11 to come to a consensus. When the Associated Press reported on the decision-making process, the reporter stated it had been made “in a smoke-filled room." The phrase entered American political parlance to denote a political process which is not open to scrutiny.

The Blackstone has been dubbed "The Hotel of Presidents". It is where Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 3rd-term Democratic Nomination was forged in 1940, where Harry S. Truman stayed when he received the 1944 Vice Presidential Nomination and where Dwight D. Eisenhower heard the news of his first ballot 1952 Republican nomination.

On May 29, 1998, the Blackstone Hotel was designated as a Chicago historical landmark. The hotel closed in 1999, after building inspectors found safety problems. The building's owner, Heaven on Earth Inns Corp, run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi looked into several options before selling the property to Rubloff, Inc., which in 2001 announced plans to convert the building into condomiums. Unfortunately, the years of neglect following the closing of the hotel took a toll on the building's appearance with both the interior and exterior facade crumbling.

In 2005, it was announced that the hotel would undergo a $112 million renovation with a planned opening in 2007 in a deal between Marriott Renaissance and Sage Hospitality, a Denver, CO based company. The new building will retain its historic name, however.

The hotel has been used in the films "The Babe," "The Untouchables," and "The Color of Money."