Building from Morrison Hotel album cover door destroyed in fire
A building popular with classic rock fans was destroyed Thursday, when a massive fire ripped through the downtown Los Angeles building made famous by The Doors album Morrison Hotel. The four-story structure on South Hope Street has been vacant for 15 years but has been used as a homeless shelter, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a written statement. It remains unclear whether all occupants were safely evacuated during the fire.
The structure, built in 1914, had a front window that read “Morrison Hotel” in the late 1960s and beyond, making it an obvious attraction for the band fronted by Jim Morrison . IN his 1991 memoir Riders of the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The DoorsDoor drummer John Paul Densmore wrote that photographer Henry Diltz stood with the band—that is was internationally famous next the release of hits such as “Light My Fire,” “Strange Days” and “The End”—outside the building one afternoon in 1969 until the receptionist was called away from his desk. At that point, the band jumped into the window and posed behind a sign that read “Rooms from $2.50.”
The photo was used on the cover of the record of the same name the following year. The acclaimed 1970 release included hits such as “Roadhouse Blues” and “Peace Frog.” Morrison is dead the following year, July 3, 1971.
Even in Morrison Hotel era, building the most wonderful days was behind it. “It was a wonderful old wooden building with many small rooms upstairs where transients and alcoholics used to sleep on a cot,” Diltz wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. In the decades since, the building has been red-tagged by the Los Angeles Department of Buildings and Safety (meaning too dangerous to live in).
In recent years, it has been used primarily as a training site for the LAFD. It was purchased in 2022 by the Los Angeles nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which intends to convert the building into affordable housing. Mark DyerExecutive Vice President of the Foundation, tell New York Times that approximately 25 people were sheltering in the building at the time of the fire. “It was probably a total loss,” he said.
According to LAFD, reports of the fire were called in mid-morning on December 26, sending more than 100 firefighters to the scene. It took 90 minutes to bring the fire under control. Video from location showed flames shooting from several windows, as well as thick black smoke.
It is hoped that most of those gathered in the building escaped safely, and the LAFD said it rescued three people from the fire. The fire was so high that firefighters “confirmed that the fourth floor had been evacuated prior to arrival,” the spokesperson said, so “K9 detection of human remains will be used, when safe, to search the structure” to determine if there were any casualties.
