Being from Chicago, I spent a good chunk of my childhood biking Lake Shore Drive with my parents, walking the historic neighborhood of Hyde Park after church, visiting my grandmother’s old brownstone… and then there was the Art Institute.
I have early memories of those front steps on Michigan Avenue, the two bronze lions flanking the entrance. They felt enormous to me as a child. Lions meant prestige and power. They were “Paramount” — cue the roaring lion at the beginning of every iconic Paramount movie of the 90s.
So when I walked into The Pfister for the first time and saw two bronze lions near the marble staircase, I felt an instant wave of nostalgia.
It turns out, both pairs of statues shared a lot in common:
The Art Institute lions were given as gifts in 1893, the same year The Pfister opened.
The Art Institute lions were given by Florence Lathrop Field, in memory of her late husband Henry Field, brother and business partner of Marshall Field, of Marshall Field’s department store.
The Pfister lions were bought in Rome by T.A. Chapman and shipped home as a gift to the hotel company he believed in enough to help build.
Chapman was Milwaukee’s preeminent department store owner. Florence Lathrop Field was the wife of a man who built Chicago’s most legendary one. Two Midwestern merchants from the same era with the same impulse.
Most people who visit The Pfister know about the lions. What fewer people know is where they came from, or how they got here.
T.A. Chapman was the second person to invest in The Pfister. He put his name down for $25,000 in the early subscription days, before there was even a building to believe in. He believed anyway, and increased his investment later. By the time the stockholders held their first meeting, they elected him president of the hotel company. He was, by any measure, deeply in it.
While Chapman was away from Milwaukee for six months, traveling through Europe as wealthy men of his era did, he never lost interest in the hotel going up back home. And somewhere in Rome, he saw two bronze lions and bought them. Just like that. Packed them up, shipped them across an ocean, and presented them to the hotel company as a gift.
That was just something people did then. Men of means traveled and they brought things back. Not souvenirs exactly. More like evidence of taste, of vision, of the kind of person they understood themselves to be. A significant gift to a soon-to-be significant place.
The lions originally stood outside, flanking the Wisconsin Street entrance, greeting guests as they arrived. At some point they were moved inside to help them stay preserved (Wisconsin winters are BRUTAL).
They now stand near the marble staircase in the lobby, next to the concierge desk that leads up to the mezzanine.
Pay them a visit next and share this story with another guest, perhaps in the nearby Lobby Lounge.
Until next time,
Megan