Project Description

MCMXXVIII. 1928. The year Chicago built a monument to the open road.

The Chicago Motor Club building on Michigan Avenue is Art Deco at street level — and this corner says everything you need to know before you even look up. The carved stone relief panel is extraordinary, flowing scrollwork and rosettes executed with a precision that speaks to a moment when ornament wasn’t excess, it was expectation. The club’s star emblem pressed cleanly into limestone. The name and date set in Roman numerals with the quiet confidence of an institution that fully expected to last.

It did. The building now operates as a Hotel Indigo, but the bones — and the stone — are untouched. That relief panel has watched Michigan Avenue transform around it for nearly a century, completely unbothered.

Some details were built to be found by people who look down instead of up.