Iconic hotel in Haiti burned down by gangs

The Star

16-07-2025

Haiti's once-illustrious Grand Hotel 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 recently.
Hundreds of Haitians and foreigners mourned the news as it spread across social media, with the hotel manager confirming the fire on social media platform 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 Precil, a Haitian-American singer who lived in the hotel from age five to 15. In a tearful phone interview, Precil 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 The Associated Press that for several months, there were persistent rumours that the hotel had burned.
'So when I heard 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 on July 5, according to James Jean-Louis, who lives in the hills above the Oloffson. He said in a phone interview on July 6 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 AP.
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, Florida on July 6 only to check 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 the late US authors Jacqueline Onassis and Tennessee Williams. It also survived coups, dictatorships and the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The Grand Hotel Oloffson was once Haiti's most beloved hotel.
A whole lifetime
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, 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.
The elder 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.'
Morse spent nearly 30 years at the Oloffson. It's where he met his wife, had his children and started his band, RAM.
'There's no life without hope, so we have to consider bringing Haiti back and bringing the hotel back and bringing the art and the culture back,' he said.
Isabelle said her parents had hoped to reopen the Oloffson.
'It's not only a business, it's our home. We were raised there,' she said. 'It was more about moving back home rather than reopening the business.'
The Oloffson served as a presidential summer palace in the early 1900s and then became a US Marine Corps Hospital before a Swedish sea captain converted it into a hotel in the 1930s.
It also served as inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene's 1966 novel, The Comedians, set in Haiti under the brutal dictatorship of Francois Duvalier, best known as 'Papa Doc'.
In real life, tourism dwindled under the Duvaliers, and the hotel became a respite for aid workers and foreign correspondents.
Tourism boost
In the late 1980s, Richard became the hotel's manager. RAM played Haitian roots music there on Thursday nights that became legendary, as were the Day Of The Dead celebrations known as Fet Gede that drew in Vodou practitioners.
'It was a vessel for so many people to gather and freely express themselves,' Precil recalled. 'RAM created that culture and that environment, made it a space that welcomed people from all types of denominations and sexual preferences.'
The Oloffson was nestled in the upscale community of Pacot in the southeast corner of the country's capital. It was surrounded by lush gardens and often described as a mythical place, renowned for its intricate latticework, turrets and spires and creaking parquet floors that characterise Haiti's endangered gingerbread homes.
A 1940s advertisement by Haiti's tourism department said that the hotel was situated 'in the coolest section of the town' and noted that English, French, German and Spanish were spoken there.
The hotel closed in recent years as gangs began raiding and seizing control of once peaceful communities.
'A lot of Haiti's architectural heritage is going up in flames right now with so-called leaders standing by with their hands in their pockets,' Deibert said.
'The destruction of the Oloffson is symbolic of the destruction of Haiti's history and culture that we've been watching over the last several years.' – AP