The Cape Cod Room in the Drake Hotel was generally acknowledged to be Chicago’s finest seafood restaurant and this menu dates from 1945.

The fine dining restaurant opened during the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition and endured for an astonishing 83 years, closing on New Year’s Eve in 2016.

The restaurant, shuttered due to renovations in the hotel, was certainly a place to people-watch. Marilyn Monroe and Joe di Maggio were among the countless people to carve their initials on the bar shortly after getting married in 1954.

Actresses Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor requested table 4 each time they visited – separately – and Oprah had table 32 and Michael Jordan had table 40.

Actors Henry Fonda and Mickey Rooney were among the guests as well as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. President Ronald Reagan and Aretha Franklin would dine in the Captain’s Quarters, a secluded area a few steps away from the main dining room.

Front of house in the dining room decorated like a New England Inn was led by the legendary Irish-born maitre’d Patrick Bredin who enjoyed a 40-year-career there.

One of the Cape Cod Room’s specialties was Bookbinder soup made with red snapper instead of snapping turtle.

The name Bookbinder comes from Samuel Bookbinder, a Jewish immigrant form the Netherlands who opened the Old Original Bookbinder restaurant in 1893 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Drake Hotel, still one of Chicago’s finest hotels, has preserved the wooden bar with all the signatures.