The building that once housed the Morrison Hotel – featured on the iconic cover of The Doors’ 1970 album of the same name – was significantly damaged by a fire in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday.
No one was injured in the fire. However, the roof of the 110-year-old, four-story, mostly empty building collapsed. The Morrison Hotel, which was once a transient hotel – when the Doors were photographed there – has been vacant for over a decade. Although homeless people often lived in the building.
“Some homeless people left the building,” an LAFD spokesman said after the fire on Thursday (via CBS News). “We had firefighters attach ground ladders to the fire escapes. Because they could see some people coming to the fire escapes.”
“It was a great old wooden building”
The photographer Henry Diltz, who photographed Jim Morrison and his band in the hotel for the album cover, would later co-found the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York. In a 2020 memoir of his famous photo, Diltz wrote: “We were at a homeless shelter on Hope Street in downtown LA. The Doors didn’t have permission to take photos. So they quickly ran into the empty lobby and sat behind the window. A roll of film was exposed before we were asked to leave.”
Following news of the Morrison Hotel fire, Diltz wrote on social media: “Sad to hear that the original Morrison Hotel in downtown LA caught fire yesterday. It was a great old wooden building. With lots of small rooms upstairs where homeless people and drunks slept off their intoxication on a cot for $2.50 a night! I think the beautiful front window with ‘Morrison Hotel’ written in red letters was the best part. And The Doors thought so too!”
Fire department training room
The building was purchased by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in 2023. A nonprofit organization that wants to convert it into affordable housing. However, as development of the property continued, homeless people continued to invade the Hope Street building.
Ironically, the vacant building has been used by the fire department as a training space in recent years, the Associated Press reports.