PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (news agencies) — Haiti’s once-illustrious Grand Hôtel Oloffson, a beloved Gothic gingerbread home that inspired books, hosted parties until dawn and attracted visitors from Mick Jagger to Haitian presidents, was burned down by gangs this past weekend.
Hundreds of Haitians and foreigners mourned the news as it spread across social media, with the hotel manager on Monday confirming the fire on X. Even though gang violence had forced the hotel in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to close in recent years, many had hoped it would reopen.
“It birthed so much culture and expression,” said Riva Précil, a Haitian-American singer who lived in the hotel from age 5 to 15. In a tearful phone interview, Précil recalled how she learned to swim, dance and sing at the Oloffson.
Longtime hotel manager Richard Morse, who had been overseeing the property remotely from the United States since the hotel’s closure in 2022, told media on Monday that for several months, there were persistent rumors that the hotel had burned.
“So when I heard Sunday morning that it burned, I did what I usually do, which is call someone who has drones and have them go take a look,” he said. “This time, when they called back, they said something like, ‘take a seat.’ I knew then that this wasn’t like the other times.”
The attack on the community where the hotel was located began late Saturday, according to James Jean-Louis, who lives in the hills above the Oloffson. He told media over the phone on Sunday that he observed the flames as he and other residents were chased out while police and gangs exchanged heavy gunfire.
Journalists are currently unable to visit the site and verify the damage at the hotel because gangs control the area, which remains inaccessible. Patrick Durandis, director of the Institute for Safeguarding National Heritage, also confirmed the fire in a message to the news agencies.
Among those lamenting the fire was Michael Deibert, author of “Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti,” and “Haiti Will Not Perish: A Recent History.”
He landed in Miami on Sunday only to open his phone and see a flurry of messages from friends in Haiti.
“When you went to the Oloffson, you really felt you were being connected with Haiti’s political and cultural history,” he said. “You went to Haiti and were never the same. And the Oloffson really captured that.”
The hotel attracted artists, intellectuals and politicians from Haiti and beyond, including Jacqueline Onassis and Tennessee Williams. It also survived coups, dictatorships and the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Isabelle Morse, daughter of Richard Morse, said he loved having writers, photographers and other artists at the Oloffson.
“His sense of community was very important to him,” she said in a phone interview Monday, describing the hotel as “his whole life.”
“For him, it represented freedom, where people from all walks of life could come in and share that space,” she said.
Richard Morse said he was reluctant to talk about what happened to the hotel given that in Haiti “so many people are dying and being raped and losing everything that I don’t want the focus to be on the hotel.”
