The Gwen

Named for the hands that carved the front

★★★★★📍 Magnificent Mile / Streeterville$$$$

The Gwen wears its name's story on its face: the Luxury Collection hotel occupying the upper floors behind the 1929 McGraw-Hill Building's landmarked limestone — whose art deco relief panels (zodiac figures and allegorical maidens in crisp Moderne carving) were sculpted by Gwen Lux, the pioneering female sculptor the hotel honors by name — at the Mag Mile's center: Michigan Avenue at Grand, atop the Shops at North Bridge, with the avenue's full retail cathedral, the river's bridges, and Streeterville's grid all at the elevator's mercy. The interiors run deco-glamour-modern (the brand's residential-luxury register: velvet and lacquer, brass inlay, the lobby's salon reading more apartment than lobby — it sits on the fifth floor, above the street's noise, a quiet-luxury signature), rooms and suites in the warm-metallic palette with avenue or city-grid views, and the social centerpiece earning the summer bookings: the fifth-floor terrace — one of the Mag Mile's few true outdoor hotel terraces — running fire tables and cocktails against the surrounding towers, attached to the supper-club dining room whose jazz-age register holds year-round. The practical luxury is positional: the Mag Mile's shopping starts downstairs (literally — the Shops at North Bridge connect), the river and its architecture cruise docks run five minutes south, Navy Pier fifteen east, and the theater district ten across the bridge — the first-timer's wish-list radius with a landmark's manners. Fit: shoppers at the source, couples on the terrace-and-supper-club arc, deco romantics, and first trips that want the Mag Mile address without the convention-hotel anonymity.