Sherman House Hotel

From 1836 to 1837, Francis Cornwall Sherman constructed the hotel at the northwest corner of Randolph Street as the "City Hotel". It was three stories tall. It was renamed the Sherman House in 1844 after Sherman remodeled it, with two stories added to it. In 1839, Sherman retired from managing the hotel, handing over management to the firm of James Williamson and A.H. Squier. The next year, Williamson retired from the firm, and William Rickards acquired his interest. Proprietorship of the hotel remained in the possession of Rickards and Squier until 1851, when they sold their proprietorship to the firm of Brown & Tuttle. In 1854, the firm became Tuttle & Patmor when A. H. Patmor acquired Brown's share in that firm. In 1858, proprietorship was acquired by Martin Hodge and Hiram Longly. ==Second hotel==

At the same site as the first hotel, Francis Cornwall Sherman built a new structure, breaking ground on May 1, 1860, and opening the new structure to guests on July 1, 1861. The structure was designed by William W. Boyington. The front of the building was made of Athens marble on the levels above it storefronts. The hotel was lost in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. ==Little Sherman House==

Following the fire, the hotel operation briefly relocated to the former Gault House at Madison Street and Clinton Street, until they could build their new structure. While operating at this site, it was referred to as the "Little Sherman House". ==Third hotel==

The hotel was rebuilt again. From 1872 to 1873, the hotel's third structure was constructed at the same site as the previous hotels. The third hotel, as with the second, was designed by William W. Boyington. The building was 160 feet long along Randolph Street and 181 feet long along Clark Street. As with the previous building, the entrance was located along Clark Street. The ladies' entrance was along Randolph Street. The building had a courtyard, and featured fireproof vaults. The building was constructed from gray sandstone quarried from a newly opened quarry in Kankakee, Illinois. The building was 115 feet tall. It contained 300 luxurious rooms, including suites. The hotel was one of the city's "big four" post-fire hotels, the other three being the Grand Pacific, Palmer House, and the Tremont House. The hotel attracted high-profile theater actors to reside in it, including Joseph Jefferson and Maurice Barrymore. The hotel came to be the Chicago headquarters of the Democratic Party. In 1904, Joseph Beifeld became owner of the hotel. For the twenty years prior to that, the hotel had been run by J. Irving Pierce, who had been proceeded by three generations of the Sherman family in operating the hotel. The hotel was home to the famous College Inn restaurant. In September 1909, the hotel closed to be replaced with a new structure. ==Fourth hotel==

Constructed from 1910 to 1911, and designed by Holabird and Roche, the new 757-room Sherman House Hotel retained the establishment's status of being one the nicest hotels in the city from the time it opened, until the 1950s. It was a modern hotel housed in a twelve-story skyscraper of steel and masonry construction. The hotel contained a new College Inn. This would be a very popular site for big band music performances. However, in 1932, the Cook County Democratic Party moved its headquarters to the third floor of the Morrison Hotel. In 1920, the building's decorative mansard roof was demolished and an additional six floors were added to the building, bringing it to seventeen stories. A 23-floor annex was constructed in 1925. It hosted events, such as the 1938 NFL draft. In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the demolition of the adjacent Ashland Block skyscraper (and its replacement with a Greyhound Lines bus terminal), the demolition of the Garrick Theatre/Schiller Building, and the land clearance taking place to make way for the Chicago Civic Center (now named the Richard J. Daley Center) greatly diminished the liveliness of this district. In either 1971 or 1972, a decision was made to strip the building to its steel frame and reconstruct it as a modern building with a glass curtain wall, At the time this decision was made, the hotel was operated by Gerald S. Kaufman. The hotel was closed in 1973, fixtures were stripped from it, contents were sold, and the building subsequently sat vacant for roughly seven or eight years. In November 1978, Mayor Michael Bilandic, as part of a broader $7.4 billion five-year public works plan that was planned to reshape much of the city, proposed building a new State of Illinois office building on the site occupied by the structure of former hotel. In 1980, the building was demolished to be replaced by the State of Illinois Center (since renamed the James R. Thompson Center). While the majority of the building had been vacant after the hotel's closure, up until shortly before the building's demolition, street level businesses continued to operate out of the building's storefronts before they were ordered by a Circuit Court judge to vacate so that demolition could begin on the structure. Due to its location at a busy area of the Chicago Loop, it was decided to dismantle the building floor by floor, as opposed to imploding it. A number of other neighboring structures were also demolished in order to make room for the new state office building. ==References==