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Inter Ocean, October 4, 1885
HOTEL RICHELIEU.
“America’s Finest European Hotel” Such is the Unhesitating Verdict of All.
....
No better location for this lineal European hotel in America could have been selected than the spot chosen, Nos. 187-88 Michigan avenue, overlooking, as it does, our inland sea and lakeside park, and facing Chicago’s most popular drive and boulevard, while at the same time so convenient to the heart of the city; and here Mr. Bemis has expended a large fortune, as one can readily understand on viewing. as we did yesterday, the splendid result. There are two six-story and ground-floor buildings, the rear one separated from that in front, for purposes of absolute protection against fire, by a fourteen foot glass-covered court, across which a hall, way of easy passage runs at each story; and throughout the hotel there is the same originality of treatment. The massive front is imposing, with its, heroic statue in marble of Cardinal Richelieu, but it is upon the interior, in its great branches of hotel, café, and art gallery, that money has been lavished Like water in carrying out the proprietor’s ideal of an “hotel with all the luxuries, elegance, and comfort of the palatial private residence,” and here undoubtedly will be the favorite resort of our people when they would dine down town, say after theater, with friends in the finest manner or exhibit to outside visitors one of the prides and institutions of the town, and its mission wit ever be to cater to the “best people in the city”—to the same class of patronage as that of the Brunswick, Hoffman, Gilsey, and St James in New York.