The Wormsers’ move to the Drake Tower brought them to the “Gold Coast” of Chicago’s north shore, one of the city’s wealthiest areas. The tower’s tenants were within walking distance of the city’s business center and the best clubs, schools, and amusements. It would have been a marvelous locale for a young woman coming of age in the late 1920s.
The Wormsers’ downtown location would have frequently exposed them to applications of modern design. Chicago was an epicenter for the adoption and the promotion of the new style, and many upscale clubs and shops featured modernist decorations. Just next door at the Drake Hotel, the design firm W.P. Nelson kept a showroom displaying boldly colored work in the modern style. The Tavern Club, frequented by Leo Wormser, was sumptuously furnished with modernist interiors. A short stroll to the south, Marshall Field’s department store mounted displays of model rooms and smaller decorative objects drawn from Austria, Germany, and France.