"Pump Room" Running Out of Steam?

By Karl Klockars in Food on Jan 5, 2010 7:40PM

It was once the shining jewel in the crown of Chicago's nightlife scene. In an era when you couldn't go coast to coast in just hours and the Toddlin' Town was a necessary stopover while traveling by train, celebrities throughout the center portion of the previous century had to have a destination see-and-be-seen place in the Midwest. The Pump Room, located in the Ambassador East Hotel in the Gold Coast, served as that locale for decades in Chicago.

However, in recent years the Pump Room has basically been ignored by popular culture. Over the past few decades, we've been focused on the comings and goings of popular joints - a Playboy Club here, Excalibur there, the E2 tragedy - and now it seems that the economy is ready to claim its next victim, as the Pump Room is dialing back its services. The Sun-Times is reporting that the bar will stick around, but the dining room will go dark - an arrangement that we can't wrap our brains around. The bar looks down directly over the dining room, and will anyone want to go drink gin rickeys while the corpse of a once-white-hot restaurant slowly cools just steps away?

It's impossible to talk about the Pump Room without mentioning columnist Irv Kupcinet as well as the words "held court" in conjunction. Just as Irv's time has come and gone - when was the last time you read Stella Foster's* column? - so has the era of the Pump Room.

For as much as we collectively holler when any chapter of Chicago history comes to a close, it's hard to build up a head of steam about the amputation of the Pump Room. Whereas some locations in town still have a vital connection between past and present, this particular location seems to be more of an example of what we've left behind. Even the name of the Pump Room is antiquated, like we'd just discovered indoor plumbing.

The Sun-Times is also reporting that individuals associated with the former Studio 54 are trying to acquire the Hotel along with the storied restaurant, which also strikes us as curious bedfellows. If anything, someone interested in reviving the Room would hopefully be interested in selling its post-prohibition era and Golden Era of Hollywood heyday. Any attempts to make it "hip" or god forbid, 70s-era should be banished from thought, ne'er to return. And admittedly, the idea of another group of New Yorkers coming to town, buying a place with a storied history, and then summarily shitting all over it does irritate us just a touch.

So perhaps the Pump Room is dead, long live the Pump Room. Sorry to see you go. But if anyone dares to touch the Green Mill, we're going to the mattresses.

*Stella was Kup's researcher and legman, and wrote most of Kup's Column when he was nearing the end of his six-decade career.