Hospitality Distinct Dwellings

Grupo Habita’s second and third properties in the United States bring two unique personalities to Chicago’s Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods.

- Mikki Brammer

The urban grit of Chicago is a stark contrast to the bucolic peace of the 8,000-acre citrus farm in Veracruz, Mexico, where hotelier Carlos Couturier spends much of his time. And yet there was something about the midwestern city that he found captivating. “Chicago is a unique city—probably the most American of them all,” he says. “It kind of lives inward and has a life of its own. It’s casual, practical, and humble.”

That was enough to convince him that a certain block straddling the city’s Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods was the perfect location for the second and third U.S.-based properties of his hotel brand Grupo Habita. (Its stable includes 12 hotels in Mexico—including the beloved Condesa DF in Mexico City—as well as New York’s Hotel Americano.)

At first Couturier and his partners had planned for only one boutique hotel, the Robey, in a fine Art Deco building known formerly as the Northwest Tower. But an opportunity to also convert the nearby historic Hollander Fireproof Warehouse set his imagination ticking, resulting in a second property, the Hollander, which opened together with the Robey last year.

The 12-story building that now houses the Robey was designed in 1929 by Perkins, Chatten & Hammond and began life as offices. In the 1980s it was nicknamed the “Coyote building” for the way its massing rises into a cupola, like a coyote howling at the moon. Among the structure’s many charms is its flatiron form, which allows for unusually generous streams of natural light into each of the 69 hotel rooms.