Silversmith Hotel Chicago Downtown — Hotel in Chicago

Let me please preface this with 1-point:

I really wish Google allowed 1/2-stars, because The Silversmith is a 4.5-star hotel.

I booked The Silversmith for a mini staycation to get into the city for dinner to celebrate her birthday and our anniversary with a few friends. We stayed here about 6 or 7-years ago for the same occasions.

After I booked the room, I gave a call to the hotel to potentially order a bottle of champagne and see what my options were. Let's just say the call didn't go well and my request was lost in translation. To my surprise, the hotel manager called me back, and I was able to pose my questions. She was very nice and was apologetic about my first call.

The check in was super easy and the hotel manager greeted us and we were given a nice room on the top floor. They also gave us a voucher for breakfast and for a few free drinks at the bar.

The circular lobby bar is very much a staple of this hotel and has been for years. The lobby still maintains that awesome art deco style! I was kind of expecting a lobby boy wearing a fez coming to help me with my luggage, Wes Andersen style, in a good way though. As a note, the quality of the bar has definitely gone downhill since our last stay. The last time, it seemed a bit more high-end, especially with the liquor selection and food menu.

The room from a distance is very nice, but when you look a bit closer, you can tell it needs a bit of a facelift. The carpet is dated, and there were weird black stains in different areas of the floor. Also, the TV in front of our bed, was not functioning correctly. We did notify the front desk before we left for dinner, but was not fixed when we got back. I wasn't going to call maintenance at that late of an hour nor did I really care at that time.

The room, even being a bit dated, had really good quality plugs in the correct places. I know that seems a little weird to mention, but i feel that goes overlooked in most people's view on rooms.

The bathroom was interesting. It had a regular shower and an accessable shower/tub combo. I believe that a room without the accessible combo, would allow them to make a larger regular shower. It seemed a bit small...

The breakfast the next morning was good. Good service, tasty food, and good coffee. Check out was a breeze.

I believe that The Silversmith is one of the best STEALTH HOTELS in Chicago. It is a quaint property, that still maintains the art deco charm, and has the service, for the most part, of a 5-star hotel. A few tweaks, a little lip-stick, a bit of higher end curation of spirits and food, will definitely make this property get the 1/2 or full star.

We will definitely stay here again and maybe they make some more improvements before...

This is NOT a luxury hotel like their website says over and over. The hotel was OK, no better than ordinary 3 star hotels. Various things were not working or clearly skimped on to save them money.

The amenities they list are quite average. They don’t have room service for food. There’s no pool. No spa. Nothing that says 4 star.

The fridge in our room froze $300 worth of life sustaining medicine (and $50 of food) at the start of our vacation. (The fridge also doesn’t have a freezer compartment, just a fridge.)

The valet parking costs $70/day. We were almost late to an event because when we called down to have our car pulled around, somehow it didn’t happen. At $70/day.

The toilet paper is rough and thin, which is inexcusable at these prices. The TP dispenser is behind you and hard to reach. I had to get up and take a step to be able to wipe. Kinda gross.

The rooms are dim. Ours had 6 lights but they all seemed to be 60 watt or lower. 1 or 2 of the lamps were unplugged, and the bulb burned out on a third.

The on/off switch on the TV remote was broken. It didn’t matter much, as there was very little to watch — just a few broadcast TV channels with commercials. No pay per view movies.

They wouldn’t give us late checkout. They said it’s up to housekeeping and we had to call back after 8am. When we called at 9:20 they said all the late checkout spots were gone. Meanwhile we saw almost no guests here all weekend.

The AC turned off at 10am or before, right as we were rushing around to get ready for our day, getting sweaty while packing and lifting heavy luggage.

But they did give us a generous early check in, if you ask.

The room comes with plastic cups that are really flimsy, disposable, and non-recyclable?? Is that luxury? Even a Holiday Inn or La Quinta would give you real glasses and mugs.

The room came with two bottles of water. But put putting them in our fridge to cook for us would have been a nice touch.

The night stands only have 2 electrical outlets each, and for some strange reason they unnecessarily made the top drawer of the nightstand fake and unusable to give you those 2 outlets. (The might stands have slots where 2 more plugs could have been installed, but they skimped.)

The two trash cans in the room are the tiniest I’ve ever seen.

Other than the first floor, the hotel decor was nothing special or attractive.

On the plus side, they have “Pure” rooms that they claim are specially cleaned to remove allergens, with an air filter in the room and on the shower water.

Parking apps like Spot Hero let you find nearby garages that are as low as $20/night, some with unlimited in and out privileges. The Grant Park North and Grant Park South lots were the closest...

Our last hotel in a US tour and our travel company recommended this one. The location is excellent for seeing Chicago. Having read the reviews about amazing service we expected a fantastic 3 night stay. Our hopes were dashed though when we arrived to check in and received a very poor reception. No 'Welcome', 'How was your trip?, etc...the unsmiling receptionist was looking at his computer, not us, and simply said ' Credit card and ID'. I handed them over and he then mumbled something about taking $250 of which a non-refundable $90 is for 'preservation' and then reeled off a spiel I could not understand or hear. I asked him to repeat what he said a bit louder as I am hard of hearing and another guest who was standing behind us told us he was telling us coffee was available 7-11 each morning. We didn't hear the other bits as the receptionist clearly did not want to talk to us. We felt very unwelcome. We lugged our bags to our room 718 which was poorly lit, view of a wall and looked in need of refurbishment. It did not feel very clean but, to be fair, as the cleaner has the same poor lighting to work jn they won't be able to see the dirt. There were two old threadbare gowns hung in the wardrobe which nobody would want to use, a TV which displayed a menu date of 1970 as it had not been updated, few channels to watch, a shower curtain over a bath with wobbly fittings and stained grouting. We had half a toilet roll on the holder and one intact spare one. On a good note, there were plenty of towels and nice bathroom products eg shampoo, gel, cotton buds etc. We didn't touch the complementary coffee/tea, or the bottled water as we feared we would be charged. We only found out when we left that this was free. We wanted ice but there is no machine. You have to order room service for that so we went without. We did not use the 'free cocktail' vouchers as only one per room per day were provided which means you have to pay the excessive bar price for another one, plus the tip of course. We did not use housekeeping but they only clean every other day on request anyway. The room was cold and the air conditioning controls made no difference. We heard other guests engaging well with receptionists and other staff during our stay, so maybe we were just unlucky with our own interaction which set the tone for our stay. When checking out our...