Plenty has changed in Chicago during the 68 years between Jean Mackie’s visits to the city.
What didn’t change for the 88-year-old Cincinnati mother of three, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of four was the rate she paid at the downtown Palmer House Hilton hotel: $9.25 per night.
A long-standing Palmer House tradition dictates that any traveler who can produce an original receipt at least 50 years old will have that rate honored in the present day. For Mackie, who spent four nights at the Palmer House during her honeymoon in October 1948, that meant paying about 3 percent of the roughly $300 nightly rate she would have been charged at the historic Loop hotel while attending her grandson’s wedding in April.
“They were very nice,” Mackie said. “I was real pleased.”
The unusual offer dates to legendary hotel magnate Conrad Hilton’s purchase of the Palmer House in 1945. He initiated the policy as a nod to the hotel’s long history; the Palmer House has been at its location on Monroe Street since 1873 and claims the mantle of North America’s longest continually operated hotel.
Palmer House spokesman and historian Ken Price said the deal is honored about every two years. The key, he said, is producing a receipt that Palmer House can keep for its archives.
“A lot of people call and say, ‘I spent my honeymoon there 53 years ago!'” Price said. “I say, ‘That’s wonderful — do you have the receipt?'”
Far more don’t than do. Those who have proof tend to be sentimental former honeymooners.
“They’ve come back with old cocktail napkins, menus, train tickets — things people hold on to because they have great meaning,” Price said. “The program is a big deal to us and something we want to keep in place in perpetuity. We’re very proud of it.”
Mackie, a self-professed “saver,” heard about the program from her son-in-law a few years back but doubted she would have an occasion to return to Chicago. When her grandson announced he would marry in the city, Mackie headed for the box where she stores years of mementos, from that hotel receipt to the Army papers belonging to her late husband, Ben, who died in 1982.
And there it was, crisp as the day it was printed on thick cardboard stock: a square document showing a four-night stay that cost a total of $37. (A room with a radio cost an extra 25 cents per night at the time, though the Mackies apparently didn’t splurge for that upgrade.)
Mackie said she knew about the Palmer House from working as a secretary at General Motors, where she would book rooms for salesmen. She and her husband picked Chicago because it was fairly close to Cincinnati and wouldn’t be too expensive.
“We didn’t have money to do anything much,” she said. “We would sightsee. We went to movies and ate out every night.”
The Chicago of 2016 looked little like what she remembered.
“It’s much faster,” she said. “There are many, many lights, and it sort of reminded me of New York. Busy, busy.”
And the hotel?
“The lobby is gorgeous,” Mackie said. “It was all young people sitting with their computers and their coffees. But it’s still a beautiful place.”
Note to all those young people: Save your receipt.
Twitter @joshbnoel
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