A Plate Full of History...

As most of you know by now (if you regularly follow my blog)...I LOVE a great "find" and I especially love all things historical...the two go hand in hand as I find fabulous vintage treasures which is of course part of the appeal for me...well, the other day I purchased a set of the most fabulous plates...over 90 years old...with local historic significance too! A true collectible!

A set of 12...



Here is a little back story....

The Hilton Chicago is a famous hotel and a Chicago landmark that overlooks Grant Park, Lake Michigan and the Museum Campus.  It is the third-largest hotel in Chicago by number of guest rooms; however, it has the largest total meeting and event space of any Chicago hotel. The hotel has housed every president of the United States since its opening in 1927.
The hotel originally opened in 1927 as the Stevens Hotel, At the time, the Stevens was the largest hotel in the world

The hotel was developed by James W. Stevens, his son Ernest, and their family who ran the Illinois Life Insurance Company and owned the Hotel LaSalle. The Stevens featured 3,000 guest rooms, cost approximately $30 million to construct (more than ten times the cost of Yankee Stadium only few years earlier), and boasted of a virtual "City Within a City". The Stevens housed its own bowling alley, barber shop, rooftop miniature golf course (the "High-Ho Club"), movie theater, ice cream shop, and drug store.

Here is the center inscription on each plate...with the Stevens insignia in the center....

The Great Depression ruined the Stevens family, and the State of Illinois charged the hotel's owners with financial corruption. As with four out of five American hotels during the Great Depression, the Stevens Hotel went bankrupt as well.

The wonderful thing about this collection is that the plates were made for the Stevens Hotel by Marshall Field and Co. another great Chicago landmark that is now a part of Chicago's glorious history...this is the stamp on the back of each plate...

Here is a closer look at the pattern around the rim...I love the silhouettes in purple and soft jade...

There is a little more to the story too (if you are interested)...

The government took the hotel into receivership, and by the late 1930s, it was valued at only $7 million. In 1942 the U.S Army purchased the Stevens Hotel for $6 million for use as barracks and classrooms for the Army Air Force during WWII. The Stevens housed over 10,000 air cadets during this time, who utilized the Grand Ballroom as their mess hall. In January 1944, the War Department closed a deal to sell the property for $4.91 million to a bricklayer turned private businessman named Stephen Healy. As World War II drew to a close,  Conrad Hilton purchased the hotel from Healy in February 1945. The board of directors changed the name of the hotel, branding it after Conrad Hilton himself in November 1951. Conrad continued to use his Hollywood connections to entice film stars, politicians and royalty to the hotel.  By the 1970's the Conrad Hilton hotel was showing its age, and some were considering its possible demolition. However, in 1984, the hotel closed for what was then the most expensive hotel renovation ever undertaken, at $185 million. The hotel was shut down for over a year as the 3,000 guest rooms were rebuilt into 1,544 larger and more elegant rooms. 600 of the rooms were converted to double sized rooms with two adjoining bathrooms. The reborn hotel glittered and helped to sustain a neighborhood revival period in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood. The newly renamed Chicago Hilton and Towers was reopened on October 1, 1985.
The grand ballroom....
I am going to really appreciate all these historic details as well as the beautiful design of these plates as I set the table for years to come.... (Merci':Wikipedia, Flickr)