Stevens Hotel - Michigan Boulevard, Seventh And Eighth Streets, Chicago, Illinois And Stevens Hotel Service Building, 725 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. I. Specifications For General Work. II. Specifications For Mechanical Work -

Two parts in one volume, 433 and 365 pp., regarding the construction of the Stevens Hotel and the Stevens Hotel Service Building, including "specifications for the materials and labor for the...Work required in the erection and completion of a 25-story, basement and sub-basement fireproof hotel building, located on Michigan Boulevard, extending from Seventh to Eighth Streets, and a 12-story, basement, and sub-basement fireproof service building for the Stevens Hotel, located on South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illiinois," covering such details as masonry, stonework, fire escapes, ornamental metal, windows, carpentry, cabinetry, doors, roofing, painting, glazing, tilework, mail chutes, plumbing, heating, boilers, furnaces, ventilation, elevators, incinerators, and electrical work. Addenda sheets bound in. A few pencil notations within the text, ink inscription to back inside cover, inscribed and dated "Lyman Russell Oroak, 1307 E. 60th St., Chicago, 1926" to inside front cover, and signed by Oroak to top margin of index of Vol. II. Not illustrated. 4to. Black cloth-covered boards, extremely minor wear. Chicago (Holabird & Roche, Architects) n.d. (1925). The Stevens Hotel was designed in the Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1927. It was developed by James W. Stevens, his son Ernest, and their family who ran the Illinois Life Insurance Company. At the time, it was the largest hotel in the world, with 3,000 guest rooms and a construction cost of $30 million, as well as its own bowling alley, barber shop, rooftop miniature golf course, movie theater, ice cream shop, and drugstore. However, the Great Depression took its toll, and by the late 1930s the hotel went bankrupt and was taken by the government into receivership.
In 1942, the US Army purchased the hotel for $6 million to be used as barracks and classrooms for the Army Air Force during the war. In 1945, the hotel was purchased by Conrad Hilton, and in 1951 it became the Chicago Hilton.
Very scarce; as of March 2021, OCLC locates only a single holding in North America.