Hotel Oloffson: Gangs in Haiti burn beloved Gothic gingerbread hotel that rose to international fame
Source: Associated Press
Gangs in Haiti burn beloved Gothic gingerbread hotel that rose to international fame
By DÁNICA COTO and EVENS SANON
Updated 2:27 PM EDT, July 7, 2025
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — 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 The Associated Press on Monday that for several months, there were persistent rumors that the hotel had burned.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/haiti-grand-hotel-oloffson-burned-down-gangs-bb08a45c646bf5bada9759721de1b342
Hôtel Oloffson in 2007 (Wikipedia - Creative Commons)
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