The Divine Lorraine Hotel

The Divine Lorraine Hotel stands on the corner of Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue. It is a massive building that is abandoned and defamed with graffiti. If you take a drive by, you would never imagine the rich history that is behind this building.

This statuesque superstructure was built between 1892 and 1894 and originally known as the Lorraine Apartments. Victorian architecture  and massive rooms housed the wealthy elite that lived in thePhiladelphia area. This apartment building was one of the first of its kind, especially in this area, boasting an in-house staff and central kitchen. It also housed two large ballrooms for various events. It was one of the first high rise apartment buildings in the city at ten stories high.

In 1948, the Lorraine Apartments were sold to George Baker, more famously known as Father Divine. Father Divine was the leader of the Universal Peace Mission Movement and, after purchasing the space, renamed it The Divine Lorraine Hotel. This hotel was one of the first to be racially and religiously integrated but, to stay here, you did have to follow the rules of the movement. Besides no smoking, no drinking, and no profanity, the two sexes had to reside on different floors. Father Divine converted a ballroom to a place of worship and also created a public dining room where people could purchase inexpensive meals. Rooms were given to the clientele that stayed, as all savings were supposed to be handed over to Divine. Other rooms could be rented but at an extremely low price.

Father Divine passed in 1965 and his followers continued to run the hotel until 2000. David Peace, a member of the International Peace Mission Movement, resided in the building from 2000 until 2006, maintaining the space to the best of his abilities. In 2002, the Divine Lorraine was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There have been recent plans to restore the building but they have all been unsuccessful. The most recent, by developer Michael Treacy, Jr. was, in fact, just a farce, and workers began to tear the building apart, selling whatever they could.

Today the Lorraine is just a vacant and damaged shell. Its wonderful features and beautiful architecture are hidden by boarded up windows and graffiti covered walls. This building that was a first in its own right has now been left in awful disarray waiting for someone to come along and rehabilitate it. On February 6, 2012, Mayor Michael Nutter claimed that the building was the focus of efforts to revitalize the area. He was quoted saying that he was “actively pursuing opportunities to finally transform the Divine Lorraine.” As an avid lover of the building and its rich and complex history, I certainly hope what he says is true.