Introducing Public Chicago

Ian Schrager is a master of invention — and reinvention. Take his newest hotel, PUBLIC Chicago, for example. Though we’re calling it the “anti-boutique” boutique hotel, there’s no question — it belongs on Tablet.

While the world’s less clued-in luxury brands are still trumpeting their “exclusivity” to anyone who will listen, some of the hotel industry’s savvier players have come to recognize what a sour taste that concept can leave. Among them is none other than Ian Schrager, whose trailblazing boutique hotels did their fair share to enshrine exclusivity as a marker of luxury. But his new philosophy of inclusivity is embodied at PUBLIC Chicago, something of an anti-boutique boutique, an anti-design design hotel. As long as the service isn’t anti-service — and it isn’t — we’re still on board.

In many ways Chicago, less image-obsessed than Los Angeles or New York, is the perfect city to launch an experiment like this. And the former Ambassador East is an especially fitting location — it was here in the mid-‘80s that Phil Collins was turned away for failing to wear a dinner jacket. Suffice it to say that Jean-Georges won’t be chucking Kanye West out into the street anytime soon, at least not over sartorial issues.

PUBLIC may leave behind the velvet-rope aspect of the first generation of boutique hotels, but it holds onto Schrager’s trademark expressiveness, that emotional investment that makes a hotel feel like more than just a machine for lodging. Here a little design (by the likes of Yabu Pushelberg and Gabellini Sheppard) goes a long way. The spaces are theatrical, but subtly so, less like art installations and more like stylish backdrops for guests’ memories. It’s a timeless style that effortlessly mixes the classic and the contemporary — this building’s got plenty of architectural history, and the Pump Room restaurant boasts an impressive collection of black-and-white celebrity portraits. Imagine a modern crowd inhabiting a circa-1938 period piece and you’re most of the way there, stylistically speaking.

Bottom line: it’s effortlessly chic, but with a compensating dose of Midwest unpretentiousness. The comforts and service are pitch-perfect, always sufficient but never precious or over-opulent. And with 285 rooms there’s space in here for everyone — no velvet rope required.

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