Main entry to the Hotel Oloffson, built as a private residence by Simon Sam in about 1886. American Marines leased it and turned it into a military hospital in the early 20th century. In 1936 Walter Oloffson converted it to a hotel. In the 1950s through 1970s it was a Hollywood jetset destination.
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Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times/Getty
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —One of Haiti’s most storied landmarks — a 19th-century gingerbread mansion that once hosted cultural luminaries and political intrigue — has been reduced to ashes in the latest wave of gang violence gripping the capital.
The Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, long a haven for artists, writers, musicians and foreign dignitaries, had weathered dictatorships, coups, and natural disasters. But this weekend, it could not survive Haiti’s spiraling security crisis.
“It’s where I spent my last 40 years. It’s where I met my wife. It’s where my kids grew up. It’s where we played, where we had parties, where we danced,” said Richard Morse, the Haitian-American long term tenant and manager of the hotel, speaking by phone from his home in Maine.
Morse didn’t just manage the property — he fronted the Haitian roots band RAM, which played legendary Thursday night sets from the hotel’s wraparound balcony. The Oloffson was more than a business. “It was a heartbeat,” he said.
The swimming pool at the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, February 1981.
Slim Aarons/Hulton archive/Getty Images
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Slim Aarons/Hulton archive/Getty Images
The hotel’s history is as rich as its architecture. Built in the late 1800s, it once served as a presidential residence and later as a U.S. Marine Corps hospital. As a hotel, it became a gathering place for cultural royalty — from Mick Jagger and Jackie Kennedy Onassis to Haitian painters and poets.
The Oloffson also lives on in literature. British novelist Graham Greene, who stayed there in the 1960s, immortalized it in The Comedians, a dark satire set during the brutal regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his feared Tontons Macoute. The novel was later adapted into a film starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor — herself a guest at the hotel.
In recent months, the Oloffson stood on the frontlines of a turf war. The Viv Ansanm gang coalition, which has taken over much of Port-au-Prince, had been targeting once-gentrified neighborhoods like the one surrounding the hotel. Morse said he hadn’t been able to access the building since April.
“I’ve been trying to get there for months,” he said. “And no one would let me go.”
The fire that destroyed the hotel broke out amid clashes between gangs and Haitian police in the Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood. It was one of several historic buildings torched in recent days.
Richard Morse, right, sings with his group, Ram, at the famous Hotel Oloffson on Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 20, 2000. Morse, the son of an American scholar and a Haitian dancer who grew up in Woodbridge, Connecticut, is the latest in the Oloffson’s long line of operators.
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DANIEL MOREL/AP
Morse admits he’s uneasy about the attention the hotel’s destruction has drawn, considering the broader suffering across the country.
“The most difficult part for me is attracting all this attention to a hotel,” he said, “when there are so many people out there being killed and raped. The way I can justify it is, if the hotel is bringing attention to the killings and injustices, then maybe it serves a purpose.”
Nearly 90% of Port-au-Prince is under gang control. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been displaced by the violence. Still, Morse insists neither the spirit of the Oloffson — nor Haiti itself — is lost.
“I don’t think we’re going to see places the way we saw them,” he said. “But I believe the spirit is not gone. Haitians are such a powerful entity, people can’t get rid of it — as much as they try.”
