About Drake Hotel Chicago Illinois

The Drake Hotel was developed by brothers Tracy and John Drake and opened on New Year’s Eve, 1920. Designed by Marshall & Fox in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, the building includes:

  • 13 stories of guest rooms and suites
  • Ballrooms including the Gold Coast Room
  • Ground-floor retail, restaurants, and bars including the Cape Cod Room
  • Boiler rooms, steam heating systems, and pipe networks throughout the structure

The Drake was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1996 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Buildings constructed from the 1920s through the 1970s were routinely built with asbestos-containing materials. Asbestos was the dominant insulation and fireproofing product of that era—not the exception, but the standard. The Drake underwent multiple ownership changes and renovation projects throughout the twentieth century, and each phase allegedly brought workers into contact with asbestos-containing materials installed in earlier decades.

Large hotels built in the early twentieth century carried heavier asbestos loads than most commercial buildings. The Drake’s design required complex steam heating systems serving hundreds of rooms, large boiler plants, commercial kitchen ventilation, and extensive pipe networks running through walls and ceiling cavities. Each of those systems was insulated or fireproofed with asbestos-containing materials during the construction era.

General Equipment at Drake Hotel Chicago Illinois

The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.

Industrial Boilers View crosswalk › Process Piping View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Block Insulation View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk › Heat Exchangers View crosswalk › Cooling Equipment View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.

No Illinois EPA NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.

Material Categories in Documented Records

The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at Drake Hotel Chicago Illinois

Insulators (Thermal Insulation Workers) carry the highest documented rates of mesothelioma and asbestosis of any building trades group in peer-reviewed occupational health literature. Workers in this trade who worked at the Drake may have been exposed while installing new pipe insulation on steam and hot water systems, removing and replacing old insulation during renovation, cutting pre-formed pipe covering such as calcium silicate pipe insulation and Thermobestos to size, mixing and applying asbestos-containing insulating cement, and finishing pipe covering with asbestos-containing canvas and adhesives. Members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 in Missouri and similar locals in Illinois who performed work at the Drake and comparable Chicago-area facilities may have faced repeated exposures throughout their careers.

Pipefitters and Steamfitters who worked on the Drake’s steam heating and plumbing systems may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials when working alongside insulators handling asbestos-containing pipe covering, disturbing existing pipe insulation to reach valves, flanges, and fittings, cutting or breaking insulated pipe sections, and working in confined mechanical spaces where asbestos dust allegedly accumulated. Pipefitters frequently experienced bystander exposure—inhaling fibers released by nearby workers handling asbestos-containing products, even when the pipefitter never touched the material directly.

Boilermakers, Electricians, and Carpenters who performed maintenance, inspection, repair, and renovation work at the Drake may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials including boiler block insulation, refractory cement, asbestos gaskets, asbestos rope, insulating blankets, electrical panel liners, asbestos-wrapped wiring, and asbestos-containing drywall compound, plaster, floor tiles, and ceiling materials when cutting, drilling, sawing, removing, or disturbing these materials during their work.

Critical Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Illinois law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (735 ILCS 5/13-202). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (740 ILCS 180/2). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.

The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.

Practical first steps

  1. Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Illinois experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.

Asbestos-Related Diseases

Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.

Mesothelioma

A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.

Asbestosis

A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for compensation under most trust schedules and civil claims.

Lung Cancer

Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.

Other Recognized Diseases

Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.

If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.

Data Sources

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.