In less desperate times, Hollywood's elite – along with The Gays – flocked to it. But the Haitian gangs that now control 90% of the capital burned it to ash.
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Tucked away in a hillside garden a short walk from the restive heart of Port-au-Prince, the Hotel Oloffson was a strange kind of refuge. Through good years and a lot of bad ones, it stayed open to all comers, welcoming despite its dark undertones and somehow immune to Haiti's political strife. A favorite haunt of artists, celebrities, and local intelligentsia, along with aid workers and journalists needing a stiff rum punch to ease the day's stress, the Gothic gingerbread mansion weathered brutal bouts of violence and natural disasters to become the most storied hotel in the Caribbean.
Mick Jagger and Jackie Kennedy Onassis were guests, and it was a centerpiece in Graham Greene's classic novel The Comedians about the terrors of dictatorship. Later, it was reborn as a bohemian jam-hall where diverse crowds pulsed to Vodou-rock rhythms deep into the night. After the 2010 earthquake leveled much of the capital, the Oloffson was one of the few hotels left standing. The music went on. And the faithful kept coming back, even as the country descended into lawlessness.
Last weekend, the armed gangs that have a stranglehold on Port-au-Prince burned the hotel to the ground. In recent months the gangs have attacked schools, hospitals, libraries, a historic radio station, and the offices of the country's oldest newspaper, part of a "very clear and obvious effort to erase all these institutions," says Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat, who grew up poor in the capital's Bel Air neighborhood.
The Grand Hotel Oloffson, as it was then known, became jet-set famous after the 1950s, when a French photographer bought the hotel and attracted the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, and Graham Greene, some whose names adorned the guest rooms. Greene immortalized the hotel in The Comedians, a haunting novel about life under dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his dreaded paramilitary goons, the Tonton Macoute.
The sudden, total loss was a gut punch to the Morse family and generations of hotel patrons who enjoyed camaraderie and music at the Oloffson, no matter the troubles beyond its walls. "We're heartbroken," says Isabelle Morse, Richard's daughter. "It touched so many people: artists, journalists, writers, rich, poor, Black, white, local, international, gay, straight; it was home to all. Everyone has a piece of memory attached to it, and they have no place to go anymore. It feels like somebody died."