The St. Regis Chicago

Chicago's newest serious wellness floor, inside its newest serious building. The St. Regis occupies Jeanne Gang's rippling glass tower — the tallest building in the world designed by a woman — and gave 12,000 square feet of it to a purpose-built wellness level: dry sauna, steam room, three fitness studios, and an indoor pool with the lake filling the windows. Everything still feels box-fresh, which is its own pleasure; the heat rooms haven't had a decade of conference traffic through them. The hotel is glassy, quiet, and slightly removed from the Michigan Avenue scrum down on the river's east end. Spa access gets you in. Come for the architecture, stay because the sauna is genuinely well made.