Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (AP)-The famous Haiti Grand Hôtel Oloffson, a beloved Gothic gingerbread home, inspired by books, hosted parties to Dawn and attracted Mick Jagger’s visitors to the President of the Haiti, burned the gangs last weekend.
Hundreds of Haitian residents and foreigners regretted the news because it spread to social media, and the hotel manager confirmed the fire on a short comment on X. Although gang violence forced Haiti’s capital in Port-U-Prince’s capital in recent years, many expected to open again.
“It gave birth to so much culture and expression,” said Haiti American singer Riva Précil, who lived in a hotel for 5 to 15 years. Speaking on the phone, Précil recalled how she learned to swim, dance and sing in Olofson.
According to James Jean-Louis, who lives above Olofson, a late Saturday attack on the hotel began. On Sunday, he said the Associated Press said he watched the flame because he and other residents were exhausted until the police and gangs exchanged a heavy weapon.
Journalists are currently unable to visit the capital’s hotel website Port-Prince and check the damage as gangs control an area that remains inaccessible. Patrick Durandis, director of the National Institute of National Heritage, also confirmed the fire in the report.
Michael Deiber, the author of the last testament: Haiti’s fight “and” Haiti, will not lose: The latest story “among the regreats.
He landed on Sunday in Miami just to open the phone and see many friends in Haiti.
“When you went to Oloffson, you really felt that you were associated with the political and cultural history of Haiti,” he said. “You went to Haiti and you’ve never been the same. And Olofson really captured it.”
“This is our home”
The hotel from Haiti and beyond attracted artists, intellectuals and politicians, including Jacqueline Onassi and Tennessee Williams. It also survived the coups, dictatorships and devastating 2010. The earthquake.
Isabelle Morse, the daughter of Richard Morse, who became a hotel manager a few decades ago, said she likes to have writers, photographers and other artists in Olofsone.
“The sense of his community was very important to him,” she said in a telephone interview on Monday, describing the hotel as “his life.”
“He was represented by freedom, where people from all areas of life could enter and share that space,” she said.
Richard Morse did not return a message looking for a comment. The famous group he founded RAM early Monday X announced that the hotel was “on the ground”.
His daughter said her parents were hoping to renew Olofson.
“It’s not just a business, but our home. We were grown up there,” she said. “It was more about returning home than upgrading the business.”
Haitian heritage in flames
Olofson served as a presidential summer palace in the early 1900s and later became a US Maritime Corps hospital before the Swedish Sea captain turned it into a hotel of the 1930s.
It was also an inspiration for the 1966 fictional Hotel. Founded in Haiti, the brutal dictatorship of Francois Duvalier, best known as Papa Doc, in Graham Greene’s novel “Comics” in Haiti.
In real life, tourism decreased after the Duvaliers, and the hotel became a respite for help from staff and foreign correspondents.
In the late 1990s, Richard Morse became a hotel manager. His band Ram played Haiti’s root music on Thursday evenings, which became a legendary day, as well as the day of the dead holidays known as Fèt Gede, which attracted Vodou practitioners.
“It was a ship that so many people had to gather and express themselves freely,” Précil recalled. “Ram actually created that culture and that environment, turning it into a space that congratulated people from all kinds of denominations and sexual attitudes.”
Olofson was located in a higher -level Pacot community in the southeastern corner of the country’s capital. It was surrounded by lush gardens and is often described as a mythical place, famous for its sophisticated gardens, towers and towers and sipping parquet floors describing Haitian gingerbread homes.
1940 Haiti’s Department of Tourism stated that the hotel was in the “coolest part of the city” and noted that English, French, German and Spanish were spoken there.
In recent years, the hotel has been closed when the gangs began a raid and used the once -peaceful community control.
“Numerous Haitian architectural heritage is currently in flames, and so-called leaders are standing near their hands in their pocket,” Deiber said. “The destruction of Olofson symbolizes the destruction of Haiti’s history and culture, which we have watched over the last few years.”
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Country from San Juan, Puerto Rico.