Upper portions of Chicago’s Grand Pacific Hotel
By Megan McKinney
Chicago’s Grand Pacific Hotel pictured above replaced a similar version, which stood in the same spot—the block bounded by Clark Street, LaSalle, Quincy and Jackson—for less than a year preceding the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It was but one of the celebrated Chicago buildings destroyed in the horrific conflagration. The design at the top of the page, by William W. Boyington, was for one of a pair of prominent hotels rushed into rebuilding following the massive destruction—the other would be the second Palmer House.
Post Fire Palmer House
National, even global celebrities, were drawn to both these great hotels and their international fame.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was a Grand Pacific guest on his first visit to Chicago during part of his 1882 lecture tour of America.
United States President James A. Garfield
James A. Garfield stayed at the Grand Pacific during the 1880 Republican National Convention. He was nominated on the 34th ballot to represent the party in that year’s presidential election. Garfield won the election and served as our 20th president from March until September 1881, when tragically this impressive appearing man died from an assassin’s gunshot wound he had suffered in July.
John B. Drake
Following its recovery from the Fire, famed Chicago hotelier John B. Drake took over management of the rebuilt Grand Pacific. He is well remembered for hosting the celebrated “Great Game Dinners” featuring exotic cuisines.
The Grand Pacific Game Dinners were a Chicago social institution for more than 50 years, with newspapers devoting four inches to the menu of each of the dinners and its guests.
Although a nationally renowned event in the late nineteenth century, Mr. Drake’s annual Game Dinner would provide a menu that might not suit the “taste” of current guests. Favorites of the era were such dishes as ham of black bear, leg of elk, loin of moose and buffalo tongue.
Back yard small wildlife also provided questionable dishes. Is broiled rabbit a tempting menu option? Or ragout of squirrel à la Française?
In addition to all else, Chicago’s Grand Pacific Hotel hosted an event that is unique, something that would never have occurred to any of us. It was the location for the General Time Convention of 1883 which, on October 11 of that year, adopted the current Standard Time System in the United States. The plan established four equal time zones across the country, which we now take for granted, each one hour ahead of the zone to its west. All railroad clocks in each zone were to be synchronized to strike the hour simultaneously.
Ahhh. What we can learn by reading online nonfiction!
Author Photo: Robert F. Carl
