The Pump Room

 

Do you remember this vintage photo of a pair of models in an earlier Pump Room by photographer Victor Skrebneski?

 

Here is John Reilly’s image of the same subject, featuring the late St. Luke’s Fashion Show Producer Skip Grisham.

 

Ambassador Chicago was The Pump Room’s home

 

A great Chicago legend, The Pump Room, was created on October 1, 1938, when hotelier Ernest Byfield opened the restaurant in his Ambassador East—now Ambassador Chicago—hotel in the city’s Gold Coast. During the 1950’s and 60’s, when Hollywood film personalities and New York theater figures traveled by rail between coasts, they changed trains in Chicago, dining and spending a night at the Ambassador East. Mr. Byfield named his restaurant The Pump Room, creating quite a bit of local—and world-wide—magic. And the legendary room’s photos captured it all.

 

What great memories this image evokes of The Pump Room’s upper level bar when it was the “only”  place for Gold Coasters to gather at the end of the day.  

 

Situated on the northeast corner of State Parkway and Goethe Street, the hotel regularly dispatched limousines to meet incoming trains from east and west as they reached Chicago stations. It was then that Hollywood and Broadway stars joined the stars of Chicago at The Pump Room.

cruisinghistoryco,m

Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood at The Pump Room 

 

Marilyn Monroe on The Pump Room  telephone

 

 Famous guests included Frank Sinatra. John Barrymore, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Salvador Dalí, John Steinbeck, Paul Harvey, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable and Sammy Davis Jr.

 

New York’s Ed Sullivan dining at The Pump Room

The Pump Room was special to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who honeymooned at The Ambassador. 

Elizabeth Taylor dining in The Pump Room between trains

In 1964 , popular cabaret pianist Stanley Paul was brought in to Chicago from New York by Ernest Byfield to lead The  Pump Room orchestra. What a brilliant stroke it was!! Stanley was an immediate hit not only on The Pump Room stage but also throughout the city.

 

Stanley Paul  with Zsa Zsa Gabor

 

Stanley Paul, with Bette Davis

 

Stanley Paul with Judy Garland–and they all adored him.

 

Author photo: Robert F. Carl