Hotel Ambassador

Culled from: Drury, John. Dining in Chicago, New York: The John Day Company, 1931, p. 146.

Note: The Newberry Library holds the personal papers of author John Drury.

HOTEL AMBASSADOR, North State Parkway and Goethe Street

In the heart of the Gold Coast and very very swanky. Main dining room, at dinner, alive with the presence of Chicago society folk and others well known. Here, any evening, you are likely to see Chicago's veteran member of the bench. Judge Thomas Taylor, Jr., and Mrs. Taylor; John Borden, the explorer, and his wife, Courtney Borden, the writer; Senator and Mrs. James Hamilton Lewis; and James Keeley, the former Chicago Tribune executive, and Mrs. Keeley. All is elegant, dignified, and expensive in this dining room and the cuisine is carefully prepared to suit the tastes of well-travelled epicures. No music. The room is not large. It is done in the Colonial style and crystal chandeliers of striking beauty depend from the ornate ceiling. For less formal atmosphere, many of the society people eat in the Italian Room of the old Ambassador Hotel, across the street from the Ambassador East, and reached through a tunnel under State Street. The Italian Room is reminiscent of some old hall in a Neapolitan villa and the cuisine here is the same as that of the dining room in the Ambassador East.

Maitre d'hotel: Charles Metcalf