The fourth and final building it had occupied was demolished in 1980 to make room for the James R. Thompson Center.

[1] Journalist James W. Sheahan wrote that the hotel's public spaces, including its Grand Hall, parlors, and reception rooms, "are not surpassed in size or general convenience by any similar hotel apartments in the country.

[6] The hotel attracted high-profile theatre actors to reside in it, including Joseph Jefferson and Maurice Barrymore.

[2][8][9] It was a modern hotel housed in a twelve-story skyscraper of steel and masonry construction.

[13][14] However, in 1932, the Cook County Democratic Party moved its headquarters to the third floor of the Morrison Hotel.

[2] On April 12, 1924, the AM radio station WLS began broadcasting from a studio in the hotel.

However, he never lived there, as there proved to be tremendous demand by politicians and famous actors to stay in this apartment.

[18] The hotel's venues, such as the College Inn, Panther Room, Well of the Sea, and Scuttlebutt Lounge, for years, were famed institutions.

[14] It was also a popular gathering place for politicians who worked at nearby Chicago City Hall.

[19][20] In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the demolition of the adjacent Ashland Block skyscraper (and its replacement with a Greyhound Lines bus terminal), the demolition of the Garrick Theatre/Schiller Building, and the land clearance taking place to make way for the Chicago Civic Center (now named the Richard J. Daley Center) greatly diminished the liveliness of this district.

[9] In 1969, a 10x57 large foot concrete relif sculpture entitled The Form Makers: 1836–1969 by Nehemia Azaz was added to the lobby of the hotel.

[22] The hotel was closed in 1973, fixtures were stripped from it, contents were sold, and the building subsequently sat vacant for roughly seven or eight years.

[12][2] The renovation never materialized, as ownership had been unsuccessful in receiving financing for the partial demolition and reconstruction of the building.

[2] The owners had taken a loan from the Teamster Local 710 pension fund in 1974, and the pension fund began legal proceedings in January 1976 to attempt to foreclose the building's ownership after they failed to repay the loan.

[23] In November 1978, Mayor Michael Bilandic, as part of a broader $7.4 billion five-year public works plan that was planned to reshape much of the city, proposed building a new State of Illinois office building on the site occupied by the structure of former hotel.

A number of other neighboring structures were also demolished in order to make room for the new state office building.