“Leonardo da Vinci once said, ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,’” says hotelier Ian Schrager, co-founder of Studio 54 and the mind behind hotels such as the Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan and the Delano in South Beach. “It’s my creed in life.” It’s also the lifeblood of Schrager’s latest project: a $35-million renovation of the 285-room Ambassador East Hotel and Pump Room restaurant, originally built in 1926 and located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. Known in the past for experimenting with “irony, sleight of hand, some tricks,” as Schrager himself puts it, with his latest hotel, called Public, the impresario took a “completely new track.”

Public not only differs in style from his previous, radically designed hotels, it’s also personal. “The hotel is predicated on my apartment as a point of departure,” says Schrager, who lives in an 8,500-square-foot penthouse at the Herzog & de Meuron–designed 40 Bond residences, which he masterminded and developed. British designer John Pawson did his flat’s simple, stripped-down interior. Why, though, did Schrager turn to his apartment? “The only way to distinguish yourself now [in hotels] is to do something very, very personal,” he says. “If you do it personal, it’s like an artist’s studio. It’s unique and individualized.”

Working on Public with his in-house team, which is headed by partner Anda Andrei, Schrager implemented, among other things, Christian Liaigre seating, steel Luxo lamps, and sheepskin-covered Thonet chairs. The result: “an amalgamation of organized chaos,” he says. “The whole idea was to get away from overzealous design.” Still, a dash of Schrager’s trademark whimsy remains: Tongue-in-cheek, Vermeer-style photographs by Hendrik Kerstens are mounted in 24-karat gold Baroque frames, and a train-station clock, à la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, tells time backwards. “We had fun,” he says. “We didn’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Public Chicago
Photos: Courtesy of Public Chicago