All Magnificent and Wild: Notes on Chicago Residential Hotels

All Magnificent and Wild is an ongoing typological research project on Chicago’s residential hotels, led by Associate Professor Francesco Marullo at the UIC School of Architecture.

Residential hotels are a hybrid architectural form that emerged in the late nineteenth century to house a transient workforce seeking employment and inexpensive lodging. They include settlement houses, SROs, flophouses, YMCAs/YWCAs, charitable institutions, religious missions, women’s clubs, workingmen’s palaces, and cage hotels—traces largely erased by decades of urban renewal and gentrification. In addition to a set of speculative reconstruction drawings and visual juxtapositions by Francesco Marullo, the exhibition also presents thirty-two historical case studies produced through recent graduate and undergraduate courses at the UIC School of Architecture.

Proceeding like a forensic investigation—from scarce records and fragmentary evidence toward plausible reconstruction—the research proposes a counter-history of these buildings as a way to imagine alternative futures for affordable housing in Chicago. Among these types, the single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel best crystallizes the nomadic character of the residential hotel in its most classical form—defined by Chicago code as a building in which at least 90 percent of the units are single-room occupancies. Spartan architecture, cryptic names, modest appearance, mid-size scale, and flexible structural organization allowed SROs to be modified and appropriated over time, accommodating a wide diversity of residents, needs, programs, and desires—while often avoiding the paternalism typical of larger social-housing and philanthropic models.

Beyond landmarking, protecting, or expanding what remains, All Magnificent and Wild argues for a contemporary counterpart to the SRO: a mid-size co-living architecture tuned to today’s transitional demographics. Such a model would expand the supply of compact, well-made dwellings for single-person households priced out of the market, as well as temporary and seasonal workers, adults in transition, rent-burdened students, older adults, migrants, people moving out of shelters and informal units, and those leaving the criminal-legal system. Smaller units are typically less costly to build and easier to operate, reducing per-person costs, concentrating density where it is needed, and making shared living a viable alternative—multiplying opportunities for the common and its everyday rituals. This is a design question with real political stakes: if the smallest room is where those stakes become visible, architecture—the society of rooms—is where they take form.

RELATED EVENTS

Saturday, March 14, 2026, 5–7PM
Opening reception. Free and no need to RSVP.

Tuesday, March 31 – (INFO)
Presentations by Francesco Marullo, Dan Towler Weese, and Susan King
“Don’t Give Up the Ship!”

Saturday, April 11, 2026, 5–7PM
Closing reception. Free and no need to RSVP.

EXHIBITION CREDITS

Curator: Francesco Marullo
Organizer: MAS Context
Drawings: All Magnificent and Wild is an ongoing project emerging from several graduate and undergraduate courses led by Associate Professor Francesco Marullo at the UIC School of Architecture. The exhibition showcases drawings by Francesco Marullo and students Hadassah Greebel, Anita Khalili, Tom Godinez, Daniela Osorio Sañudo, Mario Pliego, Meghna Sanyal, Alex Serbanescu (Arch 566-567), Jorge Bryant Chavez, Sarah B. Feinberg, George Fierro, Britney Flores, Samara Nivah Granger, Shizuki Hara, Ibrahim Horeish, Racheal Olujide, Anthony Alexis Ramos, Justyna A. Rychtarczyk, Gianna Marie Salerno, Abigail Mary Serban, Dan Zeglen, Zheng Zeng, and Miroslava Chavolla Avina (Arch 465), collectively produced between Fall 2024 and Fall 2025.
Photographs: Courtesy of the Abakanowicz Research Center at the Chicago History Museum
Video: Courtesy of the Chicago Film Archive
Acknowledgments: Mickey Gral