A once good hotel has fallen into disrepair
The Wyndham Blake Hotel (formally the Blake Hotel) was a once great boutique hotel that had an attentive staff, nice rooms, and great location for Grant's Park. Sadly, only the location is all that this hotel has going for it and while we have stayed in their corner suite for the past four years, this was likely our last time there.
What went wrong (see pictures):
We arrived with reservations for room 722. Gina, snarky to say the least, greeted us and once confirming our reservations informed us that Blake doesn't book specific rooms but would place us in 622. I guess that is the hotel's way of calling me a liar despite having emails to the contrary. Ultimately it's the same room, just one floor lower so no big deal but remember - the customer is always right (and don't ever call your customers liars in any passive / aggressive tone).
This is a corner suite and we had to ask for a refrigerator. At $2,500 a week I expect basic items.
Our room was not clean with dirty furniture that badly needed attention (see pictures).
The crown molding was peeling off the ceiling (see pictures).
Various items in a supposedly "clean" room that didn't belong to us were found, including (see pictures): A dirty sock, an old soap box, a large plastic bag (hopefully for toiletries and not the other stuff), a tube of hair product, and an Oct 8, 2011 American Airline ticket (not photographed because it had personal identifiable information on it) but we hope the lady has a safe flight to DFW and found a cleaner room.
A sink that overflowed if you left the water running for more than a minute even with the drain open (see picture).
A sink that leaked all over the counter keeping you from putting your toiletries and clothes on the counter. The counter was wet when we checked in to our "clean" room. The photo was taken when we first arrived and hadn't used the sink yet (see picture).
A bath tub with no drain stopper. I called on this the first day we arrived (Wednesday) and by Saturday I stopped by the new Target in downtown Chicago and just bought one for myself. When I checked out on Tuesday no one had ever came in the room to fix it (see picture).
A ventilation system that "chirped" continuously. We found if we shut the bedroom and bathroom doors when we went to bed it somewhat deaden the sound.
Filthy ventilation with dirty, dust, and mold growing on it (see picture).
Hotel elevators that broke down but no sign to tell us there was a problem. After waiting what seemed to be an eternity, we finally took the fire stairs only to find a sign on the first floor. I guess the other 11 floors of people didn't need to know this information. They later fixed one elevator but had a security guard on it to ensure no more than 5 people (plus him) were on it at any given time - makes you wonder if it was safe?! There is only one ice machine (12th floor I think) and one poor guest had to wait until there was a "break" in the elevator use before the guard could take him up there for a bucket of ice. 
We found a brochure under our door one night for a Chinese place, Paper Dolls and asked Andrew at the front desk if they were any good. After confirming it was "good" we ordered from there only to receive the worse Chinese food we had ever eaten. Not Andrew's fault directly but it did call their judgment into question after all the other issues. We also had a concern about hotel security as someone clearly had access to all the floors and went about sliding flier under the door of each room. I would feel a lot safer knowing that everyone on the floor is a guest and not some stranger off the street trying to drum up business.
On Saturday our beds were made...that's it, towels didn't get picked up, blankets on the sofa were left a strew, and toiletries weren't replaced. I suspect that housekeeping got distracted and never came back.
Upon checkout we drew Gina again (oh lucky us). She asked if we were leaving early and when I informed her that we book to depart on Tuesday, she argued with us that we were booked through Tuesday night but she would go ahead and check us out now (how wonderful of her, I guess the other option was to keep us there for another day). Yet again another example of informing the customer that they were wrong ("mistaken" was the word I believed she used when I mentioned our reservation).
The other basic thing missing was a welcoming staff. The old "welcome home" greeting is no longer in practice and if it wasn't for the great bellhop staff (Ron, Jesse, and Greg) we wouldn't have been acknowledged at all. What used to be a great hotel is just a shell of its former self that is not clean, not friendly, and not well maintained.