Steuben Club Building

Art by: Chris Hytha

Story by: Mark Houser

To burnish their patriotism and prestige after World War I, Chicago businessmen of German descent built a skyscraper for their private club, named after the Prussian noble who trained George Washington's troops. To design their Teutonic tower, they chose a Chicago immigrant trained at the Munich Royal School of Architecture.

Club rooms originally filled the narrow upper tower, while the bulkier lower part was mostly leaseable office space, topped with the club's exercise rooms and handball courts, a lavish two-story ballroom and main dining hall, and a skylit natatorium. Financial problems forced the club members to sell shortly after opening, and the ballroom's pipe organ was repossessed for the Black Forest village attraction of the city's 1933 World's Fair. The pool is still enjoyed by residents of the recently renovated highrise.

Late one night in 1948, William Granata, an aspiring Republican politician who lived in the tower apartments, was found hacked to death in the revolving door. His murder was never solved, though it bore the markings of a mob hit. Granata's sister, Ursula, had been the secretary and former fiancee of "Easy Eddy" O'Hare, who ratted out Al Capone for income tax evasion in 1931 and was subsequently shotgunned in his car eight years later.