Text description provided by the architects. In early 2004, VDTA was commissioned to design a 16‐story extended stay suites hotel at the corner of Lasalle and Huron Streets in Chicago by the site’s original developer, Duke Miglin. It was his desire to employ a staggered truss structural framing system for the building – something new to Chicago – for its speed and efficiency of erection. Construction began in 2007 but the project fell victim to the economic downtown in 2008, topped out with just the first components of exterior cladding installed. For three years the partially constructed structure sat, a rusting, tarp‐wrapped reminder of the Great Recession, an eyesore on the skyline dubbed “The Mummy” by the neighborhood’s residents.
