My biggest and only regret from when I lived in Philly? That’s easy. It was not breaking into the Divine Lorraine Hotel to check out the shabby beauty hiding behind those grimy, graffiti covered walls.
The Divine Lorraine Hotel: Love at First Sight
I fell in love with the Divine Lorraine Hotel the first time I laid eyes on it. Located a few blocks and about a hundred years from my old apartment in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, the Divine Lorraine Hotel had fallen into major disrepair by 1997, the year I moved to the City of Brotherly Love.
The Divine Lorraine Hotel in its former glory. How could you not love it?
I must have first seen it when I stopped for a red light at the gritty intersection of Fairmount and Broad Street. It seemed to shimmer into my peripheral vision from out of nowhere, sneaking up on me and hitting my soul with full force like a smaller version of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, albeit well on the other side of construction. It knocked me out.
Some graffiti-covered steps still standing in the renovated Divine
Each window looked like a black eye, the walls were a shade of exhaust fumes and neglect, and I had the feeling that pieces of the balconies might blow away with the next storm. I also had the feeling I’d get tetanus if I got too close to it. A red “Divine Lorraine Hotel” sign sat proudly on top of all this, its warm glow casting a spell over the neighborhood especially at night, reminding everyone it had been a stunner in its prime.
The Divine Lorraine’s red sign, still glowing in 2018
Right at home in Philly’s weird history
Its history was dotted with luxury, religion, Civil Rights, and Philadelphia’s fascinating connection to weird movements and cults. I lost my chance to go inside when it finally closed in 1999, but I continued to love it. So did Philadelphia’s graffiti artists, who tagged this sturdy Broad Street canvas inside and out. Philly has a thriving mural arts scene and the Divine Lorraine Hotel was the unsung hero accidentally left off the roster. I lived close enough to see it change over the years and imagined a thriving community of underground artists with superb immune systems, surrounded by spray paint cans and takeout containers, giving their muse an urban facelift deep into the night.
You A Good Boy
I think all these artists became the unofficial guardians of the Divine Lorraine Hotel. Their work kept people interested in it as the years passed and real neglect set in. Even at its worst the Divine Lorraine retained the steady, soulful energy of a place that would come back one day if you just gave it a chance. The ever-changing graffiti added to the Divine Lorraine’s mystery and allure and kept a tiny flame of hope alive that someday, someone with a shitload of money would come restore it to its former glory.
Pac-Man graffiti
In 2012 someone with a shitload of money did just that. Eric Blumenfeld took the reins and started making progress on repairs in late 2014, the year I moved from Philly. Three years and more than $40 million later, he turned the Divine Lorraine Hotel into a fabulous apartment building. Though I was thrilled it had re-opened, I felt a pang of regret that I never got to see any of the transformation for myself.
Dare to Dream
My Divine Lorraine dreams came true in 2018 courtesy of Airbnb. I snagged a reservation during a cold weekend in January and finally got to see it for myself. The developers did an incredible job. They restored the lobby to its original details and made sturdy, gorgeous apartments with exposed brick and balconies overlooking the city. The security guards let me explore the two ground-floor rooms still under construction, and I got to see some of the old Divine Lorraine. I saw unexpected gems such as scraps of green-flowered wallpaper still clinging to a door frame, and some formerly forbidden graffiti that had been saved and shared with anyone who’d enter.
The cleaned-up lobby inside the Divine Lorraine Hotel
I went back in those rooms as many times as I could without annoying the security guards. It was quite a weekend, not just for me but for the City of Brotherly Love. As I stood in a place I never ever thought I’d see, the rest of the city was celebrating the Eagles as they started marching toward their glorious, improbable Super Bowl victory. A few weeks later as I watched the Eagles win their first Super Bowl, I looked at the pictures I took of the Divine Lorraine, smiled, and remembered that some dreams do come true, all in good time.