Guyon Hotel

The Guyon Hotel is a historic former hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The hotel was designed by Jens J. Jensen - no relation to the famous landscape architect Jens Jensen - in 1927 and was built in red and cream brick with arched windows on two floors and exquisite, detailed terra cotta ornaments typical of Jensen's work. It was built at a cost of $1,650,000 by J. Louis Guyon, a French-Canadian nightclub owner and dance instructor. The Guyon Hotel's first floor included commercial space and the hotel's lobby. Two ballrooms were located on the second floor. Guyon resided in the south penthouse. After the hotel opened in 1928, owner J. Louis Guyon mounted two AM radio towers to broadcast his radio station, WGES; the station aired morally conservative programming and music. One of the second floor ballrooms was used as the station's studio. Control of WGES was transferred to Harry and Thomas Guyon in the mid-1930s, and the station left the hotel in 1942, but it continues to broadcast as WGRB. The hotel entered into receivership during the Great Depression, and in 1939 it was sold for $425,000. In 1940, it was sold to Jack Galper and George London. In 1948, the AM towers were replaced with an FM tower, and WOAK began broadcasts from the hotel. WOAK became WFMT in 1951 and began airing classical music. In 1954, the station's studios and transmitter were moved to the LaSalle–Wacker Buildi

Hotel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).