Concept

Divine Lorraine Hotel

Résumé
The Divine Lorraine Hotel, also known as the Lorraine Apartments, stands at the corner of Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Designed by architect Willis G. Hale and built between 1892 and 1894, the building originally functioned as apartments, housing some of Philadelphia's wealthy residents. Lorraine Apartments was one of the most luxurious and best preserved late 19th-century apartment houses in Philadelphia. In 1900 the building became the Lorraine Hotel when the Italian-owned Metropolitan Hotel Company purchased the apartments. Later it would become the first hotel in Philadelphia to be racially integrated under Father Divine. The hotel was abandoned and deteriorated, with graffiti all over the walls, broken windows, and crumbling stone. On September 16, 2015, a massive renovation project began. Both the location of the building and the architecture itself reflect the changes that were occurring rapidly in the city of Philadelphia and in the country at the time. North Philadelphia of the 1880s attracted many of the city's nouveau-riche, those individuals who became wealthy as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The Lorraine was a place of luxurious living, providing apartments with new amenities such as electricity. In addition, the building boasted its own staff, eliminating the need for residents to have private servants. There was also a central kitchen from which meals were delivered to residents. Reporting on the Philadelphia Phillies' return to Philadelphia in April 1935 from spring training in Florida, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "the Phillies ... steamed into North Philadelphia station and jumped cabs for the Lorraine Hotel, which will be the headquarters of the club until the season opens." The Lorraine Apartments were also an architectural feat. Prior to this period, the majority of Philadelphia's buildings were low rise, generally being no more than three or four stories tall.
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