Hotel Oloffson

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The Hotel Oloffson is an inn in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The main structure of the hotel is a 19th century Gothic gingerbread mansion set in a lush tropical garden. The mansion was built as a residence for the powerful Sam family, including two former presidents of Haiti. The hotel was the real-life inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene's famous 1966 novel The Comedians. Since 1990, the hotel has been the regular performance venue of the mizik rasin band, RAM, famous for their protest music during the Raoul Cédras military dictatorship from 1991 to 1994.

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[edit] History

The hotel was constructed in the late 19th century as a private home for the Sam family. The head of a prestigious and influential family in Port-au-Prince, Tirésias Simon-Sam was president of Haiti from 1896 to 1902. The mansion was built by Tirésias's son, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. The Sams lived in the mansion until 1915, when Guillaume himself was selected from among a group of powerful politicians to assume the post of president, the fifth president in five years. Guillaume would be president for a scant five months, however, before being torn to pieces by an angry mob.[1] United States President Woodrow Wilson, concerned that the Haitian government might be seized by Rosalvo Bobo, who was thought to be sympathetic to the Germans, ordered the United States Marine Corps to seize Port-au-Prince. The occupation would eventually extend to the entire nation of Haiti. The Sam Mansion was used as a US military hospital for the duration of the occupation.[2]

In 1935, when the Occupation ended, the mansion was leased to Walter Gustav Oloffson, a Swedish sea captain from Germany, who converted the property into a hotel with his wife Margot and two sons Olaf and Egon. In the 1950s, Roger Coster, a French photographer, assumed the lease on the hotel and ran it with his Haitian wife, Laura. The hotel came to be known as the "Greenwich Village of the Tropics", attracting actors, writers, and artists. Some of the suites in the hotel were named after the artists and writers who frequented the hotel, including Graham Greene, James Jones, Charles Addams, and Sir John Guilgud.[3]

A Connecticut native, Al Seitz, acquired the hotel lease in 1960. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the hotel enjoyed a brief period of fame and good fortune. American celebrities such as Jackie Onassis and Mick Jagger were regular guests, and like Coster before him, Seitz named favorite rooms at the hotel after the celebrity guests. As the grip of Duvalierism closed over the country, however, the foreign tourist trade dried up. The hotel survived by serving as the desired residence for foreign reporters and foreign aid workers who needed secure lodging in the center of town.

In 1987, Richard A. Morse, signed a 15 year lease with Jean Max Sam, his half-brother, to manage the Hotel Oloffson, then in near ruins after the final years of Duvalierism. In restoring the hotel business, Morse hired a local folkloric dance troupe and slowly converted it into a band. Richard Morse would become the songwriter and lead male vocalist and the name of band, RAM, comes from his initials. Throughout the political upheaval of Haiti in the 1990s, RAM's regular Thursday evening performance at the hotel became one of the few regular social events in Port-au-Prince in which individuals of various political positions and allegiances could congregate. Regular attendees of the performances included foreign guests at the hotel, members of the military, paramilitary attachés and former ton ton macoutes, members of the press, diplomats, foreign aid workers, artists, and businessmen. Attendees included both black Haitians and members of the nation's less populous racial groups. Until September, 1994, when U.S. military troops arrived to oust the Cédras regime, the performances at the Oloffson offered a unique situation for all parties involved and helped sustain the band, despite its confrontations with the junta, in a period when many other artists either fled the country, were persecuted, or killed.

[edit] Popular culture

  • The Hotel Oloffson was the inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene's 1966 novel about Duvalierist Haiti, The Comedians.[4]
  • The New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, reportedly modeled his trademark haunted houses cartoons on "the Oloffson’s tropo-Gothic gingerbread façade."[5]

[edit] References

Cited References
  1. ^ Roman, Monica (2001). "Graham Greene Would Still Adore This Hotel". Business Week. May 7, 2001.
  2. ^ Secom (2002). "Links". Retrieved May 1, 2006.
  3. ^ Vergane Glorie Erelijst (2003) "Hotels". Retrieved May 1, 2006.
  4. ^ Greene, Graham (1966). The Comedians. New York, New York: Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (Nov. 5, 1991). ISBN 0-14-018494-5.
  5. ^ Shacochis, Bob (2004). "Travel Feature: Haiti". New York Travel. Apr. 26, 2004. Retrieved May 1, 2006.
General References

[edit] External links

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