| What makes it historical? |
Built by R.H. Southgate in 1893, the Congress Hotel started off as the Auditorium Annex, complementing another Auditorium building across Congress Street! It opened just in time for throngs of people to descend upon Chicago for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition! Building to a capacity of 871 rooms, the hotel changed its name to the Congress Hotel, because of its location on Congress Street, in 1911.
During World War II, the government bought the entire hotel and used it as a barracks for Army officers, but after the war, a group of Chicago residents banded together, repurchased, and reopened the hotel to the public, bringing on another age of renovations!
There are reports that this hotel is haunted! Some say the ghost of gangster, Al Capone, still wanders these halls, along with a murdered homeless person named “Peg Leg Johnny!” A mysterious hand has been seen to stick out of the walls where a workman died during construction! Room 441 is said to house the spirit of an unknown woman, and the whole twelfth floor is said to be so scary that folks aren’t even allowed on it! Are these just rumors? Book a night, and find out! |
