H.H. Holmes a hotel theme; will Speck, Gacy someday get similar treatment?

Reading a Chicago Tribune report of the Acme Hotel Company’s plans to convert rooms in their River North facility into something paying homage to one of Chicago’s early serial killers is putting creepy thoughts into my mind.

HOLMES: Eventually executed for his crimes

Such as will the day come when enough time has passed that someone will think they can make money off of housing paying memory to Richard Speck? Or John Gacy?

BOTH OF THOSE men committed excessively violent crimes, and I’m sure there will be people out there who will try to claim I am sick and twisted for even suggesting such a thought?

The Richard Speck apartment complex? The John Gacy suite at a luxury hotel?

Personally, the very thought turns me ill. I don’t think I’d want to stay in such a facility – even if it is something someday being done up in a gaudy manner as the Acme Hotel’s rooms that will contain items remembering people of the crimes Holmes committed back during the Columbian Exposition of 1893 – the World’s Fair held in Chicago to pay tribute to the 400^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus.

Back from the days when Columbus was the “man who sailed the ocean blue and discovered America,” rather than the modern image some try to present of him as a slave trader who was the worst possible thing that ever could happen to the native peoples of this continent.

HOLMES WAS A man who confessed to killing some 27 people, even though only nine of those slayings were confirmed – and some of the people to whom Holmes said he killed actually turned up alive.

Book could become a Leo DiCaprio film

What the crime spree had as a theme was that it occurred during the World’s Fair, with many of the slayings taking place in what was described in the news coverage of the day as the “Murder Castle” at 63^rd and Wallace streets that Holmes (also known as Herman Webster Mudgett) built for himself.

It was a rooming house where fairgoers stayed, and some of them never checked out – so to speak.

Reports of the era say the facility had trap doors, hidden passageways, padding to muffle sounds and even a crematorium on the premises. So as to get rid of the evidence.

NOW, THE ACME Hotel is offering up suites next week through Halloween. For $229 a night, one can stay in a place with Holmes memorabilia and news clippings on hand, and even pictures of Holmes himself appearing to peer in at you from an outside window.

Murder Castle was long ago demolished

Kind of creepy, ain’t it?

But it really seems like so much time has passed (125 years since the Columbian Exposition) that the name H.H. Holmes doesn’t readily ring a mental bell for many people.

Unless, that is, if they have read the book “Devil in the White City,” which is a novel published 15 years ago that was set in Chicago during the World’s Fair and is a fictionalized account of the things that Holmes is said to have done.

Will these long-deceased criminals … 

DOES THIS MEAN that some time around the year 2100, someone will want to think it would somehow be “cool” to have something paying homage to Speck and his bloody night of killing eight student nurses (he got caught because a ninth nurse hid under the bed, and he lost count), or to the nearly three dozen young men whom Gacy was executed for by lethal injection back in 1994?

I’m sure that if someone had tried to say a “Murder Castle” theme, even if just for Halloween, would be a novel idea back around 1910, I’m sure the bulk of Chicagoans would be repulsed.

… someday become entertainmen themes?

But I can’t think of anybody who was alive in Chicago back in the 1890s would still be with us in this realm of existence. So the hotel can get away with passing off this Halloween holiday suite as a homage to a novel

All I can say is if that is what happens to the memory of Speck or Gacy or anybody else who has committed a string of crimes, I’d find it horrid. It is my “scary” thought for Halloween this year.

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It’s gonna be a long, long, long strike

It never fails to amaze me the degree to which some people have no respect for those individuals amongst us who actually have to work for a living. 

Picketers could be in for a long-drawn-out dispute over insurance benefits for hotel workers. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

As in doing forms of labor that are tiring, grueling and are the kind of jobs that nobody really willingly takes on for themselves.

I’M REFERRING TO the people who are part of the UNITE HERE Local 1, the union the represents hotel workers at various establishments around Chicago.

They’re the ones who have been picketing for the past 10 days outside all of the upper-crust hotels, trying to make a nuisance of themselves in hopes that they’ll shame the hotel owners into meeting their demands.

Yet I get a sense from the complaints I have been reading in recent days that most people who stay at those hotels are going to be merely appalled by whatever amenities are being tampered with as a result of the striking workers.

Heaven forbid that some hotel patron who was too lazy to go outside missed a meal because they couldn’t get room service. Or that someone had to wait a little while longer while checking in to their hotel because the short-staffed businesses are behind on having their rooms ready for them.

YOU’D THINK HOTEL management would see the activity of the past week-and-a-half and come to the realization that their staffs are essential parts of being able to provide the quality of service they think they offer – and ought to be offering for the absurd rates they often charge for a room there.

Instead, they’re more than willing to try to shift blame to those workers for not doing work.

Did any of these people care at all about the picketing taking place just blocks away?

Which may be appropriate since we’re now in an Age of Trump, with a president who made his personal fortune by building all those allegedly-upscale hotels that egotistically bear his name.

I don't doubt that Donald Trump himself views the staffs of all his Trump Hotels as being totally-replaceable minions who ought to be grateful to wear work uniforms bearing the “T” (for Trump) and think their affiliation (no matter how superficial) with his name is compensation enough for their grueling labor.

I FULLY EXPECT it’s just a matter of time before the public turns on those hotel workers who are now making a racket outside the so-called elite hotels.

Just as how whenever the issue of the minimum wage and the notion of raising it to $15 per hour comes up, some people are quick to go on rants about the unmitigated gall those people have thinking their labor ought to be compensated appropriately.

We’ll also hear arguments made about how keeping employee wages and other compensation is absolutely essential to maintaining the current status of the economy. Almost as though they think underpaying the hired help is essential to preserving the “American Way” of life.

Personally, I’ve always felt companies that manage to keep their employees satisfied are the ones that have the most productive workforces – and often have people wanting to work for them.

NO COMPANY THAT thinks its workers ought to be thankful anybody bothers to employ them in any capacity is going to achieve much in the way of success. Of course, their management later will “blame the workers” for not properly producing.

What if Trump workers tried striking?

Part of the reason I can sympathize with these hotel workers is because this particular strike isn’t about salaries (although I’m sure they wouldn’t object to a raise). It’s about health insurance – as in many of these hotel companies like to lay off staff during the winter months, which results in them losing health coverage.

You’d think that management would want to have a healthy workforce. At the very least, they wouldn’t want to encourage concepts that their workers could be carrying something that could be passed on to their customers.

And in the end, it’s the notion of serving those customers properly that is the reason those hotels are in business to begin with. Particularly at a place like the Palmer House hotel downtown – where the absolute cheapest room one can get there is $169 per night. Because if one is just looking for a night’s sleep that isn’t on a park bench, there’s always Motel 6.

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Navy Pier losing its carnival-like atmosphere to become a luxury hotel

I enjoy Chicago, take a certain amount of pride in being able to say I was born here and have lived the bulk of my life here. I also think this city is a wonderful place that everybody in the world ought to come to enjoy at least once in their lifetime.
 

The carnival-like atmosphere at Navy Pier could become a part of the past. Image provided by Chicago Postcard Museum

Yet I have to confess to always feeling a little tinge of embarrassment whenever I read something reminding me that Navy Pier is the Number One tourist attraction not only for Chicago, but for the state of Illinois.

IT JUST SEEMS a little silly, to me, that people who have taken the time and effort to make the journey to Chicago wind up wasting their time checking out the pier, or at least what has become of the pier in the past three decades.

The giant Ferris wheel gave the place a carnival-like atmosphere. And I realize the historic implication of a Ferris wheel in Chicago being reminiscent of the worlds’ fairs that were held in our city.

But if you think about it, you can ride a Ferris wheel anywhere. Admittedly, you won’t get a great view of Lake Michigan at the top of a wheel at some rural county carnival. But a wheel is a wheel.

Even more silly, to me, was that Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant located at the pier. Created to feed off the popularity of the 1994 film “Forrest Gump, it also is something that seems so absurd. With all the quality dining one could find in Chicago, people would be expected to choose a brand that has 43 locations across the United States, along with Mexico, Great Britain, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Navy Pier a long ways from when it was purely a boat-docking facility

IT COMES ACROSS as being a real-life take on the gag from that episode of “The Simpsons” where the family goes to Japan and winds up eating at the “Americatown” restaurant, where mom Marge gets excited about seeing the Japanese take on the club sandwich!

In short, Navy Pier isn’t a place I go to very often (and not just because I’m a cheap grouch!). So I have to admit to feeling a jolt of excitement when I learned this week of the City Council contemplating an overhaul of the place that was erected a century ago as a pier for those ships sailing into Chicago off Lake Michigan.

Which makes the pier’s incarnation of recent years seem so ridiculously absurd. I doubt that those sailors who arrived in Chicago at the pier some 90 years ago, or those people who came to the pier to fish a half-century ago, ever would have envisioned a place that had lots of shops where one could buy various incarnations of a “I (heart) Chicago” coffee mug.

The council’s zoning committee gave its approval this week to a plan calling for a seven-story hotel to be built on the pier, along with amenities such as a winter ice-skating rink, a sloped-roof welcome pavilion (which likely would continue to have all those gift shops selling tacky trinkets) and some short-term boat docking facilities.

The days of academia are long-gone from the pier. Photograph provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia

IT IS, AFTER all, a pier. Which means boats. The people who conceived of the need for a pier sticking out one mile into Lake Michigan didn’t do so because they wanted a unique site for a carnival ride.

Although I also realize that ships transporting goods don’t arrive at Navy Pier anymore. What little shipping still arrives in Chicago sails into the piers down around Lake Calumet.

So I realize that the pier has to evolve, or else become pointless and rot away. Which is the fate it nearly suffered by the late 1970s.

I can remember the days just before the remodeling of the 1990s when the structure was largely vacant and it was obvious that the facility had a very practical purpose for briefly storing goods brought in from ships.

I CAN REMEMBER making the walk to the pier offices at the far east end of the facility, having to go through all the vacant space and feeling like it was such a waste. The ghosts of college students past from the pier’s UI-Chicago days and those from the days when World War I-era draft dodgers were incarcerated there were all over the place.

Plus, I’m also old enough to remember the “Chicagofest” festivities held at the pier that then-Mayor Jane Byrne always liked to think were the biggest part of her legacy to the city. Closing my eyes could bring to mind memories of seeing Muddy Waters perform there, along with the Turtles (remember “Happy Together?!?”).

Losing some of the sillier touristy aspects of what has become Navy Pier will be a plus – particularly if it provides a facility that can enhance Chicago as a whole.

That used to be a long walk, particularly when made on a cold December day. Photograph provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia

Although I suspect I still won’t become a Navy Pier regular, because I think that whatever hotel winds up being built at the site will be one I won’t stay at because it will wind up far beyond my own income level.

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One-time Sears Tower could someday regain a “world’s tallest building” status

For all those people who get worked up over the concept that the Sears Tower is no longer the “world’s tallest building,” relax.

There is a way in which a “world’s tallest” label can be affixed to the building (which will soon become the Willis Tower), and it has to do with the way in which developers are considering making the structure more environmentally friendly.

THE BUILDING’S NEW owners say they want to build a hotel right next to the office building, and they say the new structure would be designed in ways to make the building use as little energy as possible, while emitting as few pollutants as possible.

Some of the changes being considered also would be to the main building itself.

That has some people speculating that the new owners want the Sears/Willis Tower to get recognition by the U.S. Green Building Council as a certified building for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

This could someday be the world's tallest green building, located across the street from an environmentally-friendly hotel. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

If the Sears/Willis were to get that designation, it would definitely be the “world’s tallest environmentally friendly building.”

THAT’S A MOUTHFUL.

But it would be recognition and a designation on the building, reinforcing its status as one of the unique manmade structures of Planet Earth.

John Huston of American Landmark Properties told the Chicago Tribune that the proposed changes, ‘will re-establish Sears Tower as a pioneer.” As officials note, the hotel would not draw upon any energy from the city’s power grid.

I just have one question.

IS THIS REALLY the time to be building a new hotel in downtown Chicago? Is there really a need for more downtown hotel rooms, without an Olympic Games some seven years from now to fill them?

When I first saw the headline on the Tribune story about the proposed changes, I thought that perhaps the Willis people were figuring on converting a portion of the tower itself into hotel rooms.

It could be a way of filling some of the vacant office space with people who would be willing to pay premium rates to assuage their egos by staying in a hotel that tries not to harm the environment.

Instead, we’ll get a new building. I will be curious to see how many rooms it can rent out.

THE OTHER PART of this concept is that the Sears/Willis Tower owners apparently want to follow the lead of City Hall and other downtown buildings. Those structures planted trees and other shrubbery on their rooftops on the theory that the existence of so much greenery will help reduce the amount of heat and air conditioning the buildings must use to maintain comfortable temperatures in the structures year-round.

We could soon get grass and shrubs, and maybe even a tree or two, atop the structure up there with the broadcast towers.

There will just be one problem, and it’s not necessarily the $350 million estimated tab to plant these plants.

The other downtown buildings have structures looming over them. So if one can go into one of Chicago’s tallest buildings, you can look down upon the patches of green that are developing in downtown Chicago.

WHO, OUTSIDE OF a passing jet plane that theoretically shouldn’t be getting that close to the Sears/Willis Tower anyway, will ever see the sea of green that could develop on the roof?

It is a noble goal, though.

Chicago could become known for having the “world’s tallest green building.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: An environmentally-friendly hotel and the world’s tallest green building (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-biz-sears-tower-green-hotel-june24,0,187802.story) could both be in downtown Chicago’s future.

What should we call (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/31739/chicagoans-want-sears-tower-to-keep-its-name/) the world’s tallest green building?