page_title: Sauganash Hotel
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sauganash Hotel / History
caption_attribution_description: English: James Thompson's plat of Chicago, made on August 4, 1830. Made to the order of the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners, this marked the first formal recognition of a place named "Chicago". According to the Chicago History Museum, this is Thompson's original plat; the statement of the Canal Commissioners indicates that they based land sales on it.
context_page_description: Sauganash Hotel is a former hotel; regarded as the first hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1831, it was located at Wolf Point in the present day Loop community area at the intersection of the north, south and main branches of the Chicago River. The location at West Lake Street and North Wacker Drive was designated a Chicago Landmark on November 6, 2002. The hotel changed proprietors often in its twenty-year existence and briefly served as Chicago's first theater. It was named after Sauganash, an interpreter in the British Indian Department.
context_section_description: Mark and Monique Beaubien, the owners and builders of the hotel, were French Indian traders. In 1826 they moved to Chicago on the advice of Mark's elder brother Jean, an established trader who lived next to Fort Dearborn. The Beaubiens settled in a small cabin on Wolf's Point and also traded with the Native Americans and other travelers to the growing settlement. They built a tavern on the east bank of the south branch of the Chicago River at the point where the north and south branches meet.
  The tavern initially was named the Eagle Exchange Tavern. In 1831, they added a frame to the log structure to create Chicago's first hotel, the Sauganash Hotel.  When completed, it was one of only two residential structures on the south side of the main branch of the Chicago River, the other being that of his brother, Col. Jean B. Beaubien.  The settlement had only twelve houses at the time.  The hostelry immediately became famous, and when reconstructed later became the city's largest and finest hotel.  Immediately adjacent to the hotel's public bar was Chicago's first drug store.
  The Greek Revival trim of the new hotel contrasted with the other eleven buildings of Chicago. The symmetry of its facade was typical to contemporary Greek Revival practiced on the East Coast. Juliette Kinzie, who came to Chicago from Connecticut in 1831, described it as "a pretentios white two-story building, with bright blue wood shutters, the admiration of all the little circle at Wolf Point".  The hostelry's clientele transcended race, with natives and settlers enjoying each other's company.
  The flow of travelers and settlers intensified with the end of the Black Hawk War in 1832. In 1833 the hotel housed election of the first town trustees of the newly formed Town of Chicago. Beaubien kept the Hotel until 1834 and during his ownership he regularly entertained guests with his violin. On August 18, 1835, two years after the Potawatomi natives signed the treaty agreeing to be moved to a reservation beyond the Mississippi River in northwestern Missouri, they selected 800 braves to perform their last war dance parade on a path that passed in front of the hotel.
  In 1835, a Mr. Davis assumed control of the hotel, which subsequently had a series of proprietors.  The building briefly served as Chicago's first theater, and hosted the first Chicago Theatre company in November 1837 in an abandoned dining room. By 1839, it returned to service as a hotel, but was destroyed by fire in 1851, and subsequently torn down. The Wigwam was built in its place nine years later.
caption: Thompson's original 1830 58-block plat of Chicago showing the intersection of the branches of the Chicago River
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