The Notorious Purple Hotel (Updated)
I just learned that the The Purple Hotel has been saved. It is being renovated and developed as a mixed use structure — residential, office and retail.
Notorious for not only for being a monument to 60s bad taste (purple enameled bricks? Really?) but also for the 1983 murder (a probable Mafia hit) of Teamster Allen Dorfman in the parking lot. And then there’s the mold and an insect infestation which eventually led the last proprietor to call it quits and close the place. But today it’s notorious for being an abandoned decaying eyesore.
Opened by Hyatt in Lincolnwood, Illinois (a Chicago Suburb) in the early 1960s, the place once had a good reputation. Perry Como, Roberta Flack and Barry Manilow performed there. Young basketball phenom Michael Jordon stayed there when he first arrived in Chicago.
Towards the end of it’s life it become a “Swingers club” — for sex and drug parties rather than legitimate guests — until a court order closed it for failure to address health code violations in 2007.
It may yet survive. The latest word is that a local developer plans to gut the place and open a mixed use facility. That’s a pretty cool surprise.
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