The La Salle Hotel was a historic hotel that was located on the northwest corner of La Salle Street and Madison Street in the Chicago Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was situated to the southwest of Chicago City Hall and in very close proximity to St. Peter's Church. It was built between 1908 and 1909 by Holabird & Roche, contemporaneously with the Blackstone Hotel designed by Benjamin Marshall in a very similar style and at the time was Chicago's finest hotel. After a major fire in the hotel in June 1946, it was rebuilt at a cost of US$2 million and reopened in July 1947; it flourished for 29 more years, until it was demolished in 1976 to make room for office towers. History Chicago's luxury hotels evolved as part of the architectural revolution that found form as skyscrapers. The La Salle Hotel was built between 1908 and 1909 as a 23-story, 1,000-bedroom building in the Chicago Loop. The site, on the northwest corner of North LaSalle and West Madison Streets, had previously been occupied by the five-story La Salle Building from 1872 to 1908 and the adjacent Oriental Hall, a Masonic temple, from 1873. Known as the “Empire Block,” it housed the Metropolitan National Bank. The hotel was named in honor of Robert Cavelier de LaSalle. Built at a cost of approximately $3,500,000, or 44 cents per cubic foot, the architects were Holabird & Roche while the engineers were the firm of Purdy & Henderson. At one time Chicago's largest hotel, the LaSalle was opened in 1909 by the family of John Paul Stevens. It was run by Ernest J. Stevens, father of the Supreme Court Justice. The hotel was planned, designed and built in the commercial district of Chicago as an upscale hotel for an elite and influential clientele, with luxurious and stately walnut-paneled rooms and lobbies. An elegant roof top garden was planned as a major attraction. When it was opened in 1909, it was hailed as the "largest, safest, and most modern hotel west of New York." The Republican Party of Illinois had their offices located in the luxurious Blue Fountain Room of the hotel. During one of his long visits to Chicago, President William Howard Taft stayed in the presidential suite on the third floor of this hotel, converting it into de facto White House. A formal visit was also paid