Kinzie Hotel to make a comeback after 181 years

16-Oct-13 – With nine months to spare, the Amalfi Hotel on Kinzie Street will fulfill its contractual obligation to change its name, becoming the Kinzie Hotel on March 1, 2014.

When the five-floor, 215-room River North hotel was sold last December, the new owners had two years to change the name. The Harp Group, a Chicago-based real estate investment and development company, bought the hotel for $48 million.

The Amalfi is located in a 17-story office building (left) also occupied by Keefer’s Restaurant and Google. Photo obtained from The Alter Group. Click on image to view larger version.

The hotel had been the Amalfi since 2004. In 2007, it was sold for $29 million and then again for $50 million. Developer Peter Dumon told Crain’s Chicago Business the hotel would be renovated by March, including a bar that will be renamed Double Cross Lounge.

John Kinzie, for whom Kinzie Street is named, was from Quebec and one of the first non-native settlers of Chicago. Caught up in the War of 1812, he was accused of treason by the British, was locked on a ship bound for Great Britain, escaped and returned to Chicago.

This will not be the first Kinzie Hotel. An earlier version is mentioned in an account of Chicago in 1833 by Silas B. Cobb that was published in 1895. That two-story hotel was built of logs and unfinished boards for James Kinzie, son of John Kinzie. While its exact location is not specified, it most likely was not far from Fort Dearborn on the main branch of the Chicago River near what is now Michigan Avenue.