On your right rises a tan brick high-rise with a narrow rectangular shaft, long vertical window bands, and a stepped crown that makes it easy to spot above Stolp Island.
Leland Tower is Aurora deciding that modesty could take the day off. In nineteen twenty-six, the Aurora Building Corporation announced a hotel project so bold it would change the skyline, and Herbert P. Heiss of the First Illinois Company secured the site to make it real. Then H. G. Christman Company took the contract, and architects Anker Sveere Graven and Arthur Guy Mayger gave the city a full twenty-two-story statement piece. For a while, this was the tallest building in Illinois outside Chicago... which is a pretty confident thing to say in brick and steel.
Its name even arrived dressed for the spotlight. At first, newspapers called the project The Illinois, but then it shifted to the Aurora-Leland, borrowing some industrial sparkle from Henry Leland, the auto executive who launched the Lincoln Motor Company in nineteen seventeen. Before the doors even opened, the tower had already learned how to make an entrance.
And wow, Aurora gave it one. On the eighth of February, nineteen twenty-eight, the Leland Hotel opened with fireworks and a crowd packed in to watch. This place is where Aurora leaned into civic spectacle and public showmanship. The rooftop Sky Club turned that instinct into architecture: dinner, dancing, elaborate decor, and views that let the city admire itself while being admired right back.
Take a second and let your eyes travel all the way up that facade... what kind of city dream decides it needs twenty-two stories? If you want a stronger sense of its vertical swagger, check the west-side photo in the app; you can really feel the upward pull there.
The guest list became part of local lore: Sammy Davis Junior, Gene Autry, Kim Novak, Eddie Albert. People loved to whisper that Al Capone stayed here too, though researcher Tracy Duran later found stronger evidence that he probably never did. That tells you something important: even the rumors wanted to be glamorous. Gene Autry’s story is the real gem anyway. Before he became a star on W-L-S Barn Dance, he performed country-western programs right here.
Then the Sky Club pulled off another surprise. In nineteen thirty-seven and nineteen thirty-eight, more than three hundred twenty recordings were cut here for Bluebird and R-C-A Victor, including John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, Yank Rachell, Washboard Sam, and Robert Lee McCoy. After the hotel years faded in the nineteen sixties, the tower reinvented itself again as part of Aurora’s broadcasting network for W-L-X-T, W-A-U-R, and briefly W-M-R-O-F-M. If you glance at the east-side image, you can see the solid mass that carried all those identities.
By the time you leave this corner for Stolp Island, about a two-minute walk from here, you’ve hit the moment when Aurora stopped simply raising buildings and started staging itself. If you’re checking access information, posted hours are generally Monday through Friday from nine to five, Saturday from ten to three, and closed Sunday.
