Viceroy Chicago

The pool

• 18th-floor rooftop pool
• Lake Michigan views
• Guests only
• Opens May 1

Why it's on the list

Eighteen floors up in the Gold Coast, the Viceroy trades the Loop's architecture for Lake Michigan — a guests-only rooftop deck beside Pandan, where on the right afternoon the water and the lake read as one blue plane. Opens May 1, and worth timing a trip around.

The stay

The Viceroy is the polished Gold Coast boutique — a 2017 glass tower rising out of the rebuilt brick facade of the 1920s Cedar Hotel, with Somerset downstairs handling the Mediterranean cooking. The Gold Coast is the genteel way to do Chicago: Oak Street Beach and the lakefront path a few blocks one way, Rush Street's restaurants the other, and the Mag Mile close without being underneath it. At $$$ it's fairly priced for the neighborhood and the design — the pick if you want a grown-up base near the lake, with the caveat that the rooftop is guests-only and firmly seasonal.