Hotel Dana
666 North State Street

Not only the city’s oldest continually-operating hotel building, Hotel Dana is also one of the oldest hotel structures still standing in Chicago. Built in 1891 as the Erie Hotel, the Queen Anne-style flat building remains remarkably intact, the only of Chicago’s early hotel buildings not to have undergone significant alteration. Furthermore, the five-and-one-half-story Hotel Dana is one of the few grandly-scaled Queen Anne structures left in Chicago, where once there were many.

With redevelopment on all sides, the Hotel Dana occupies a prime River North location. A surface parking lot occupies the site to the north, while a small Victorian house now used for commercial purposes – a likely tear-down – sits to the south. This combination puts incredible pressure on the Hotel Dana as a potential candidate for demolition.

Preservation Chicago has been engaged with government officials since 2001 concerning the fate of the Hotel Dana. Despite its Orange-rating, city officials have indicated that they would not be opposed to allowing the building to be demolished. Of further concern, only a few months ago, officials were approached by a developer who expressed interest in razing the structure.

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