Divine Lorraine Hotel
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Lorraine Apartments
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| Location | 699 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123 |
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| Coordinates | 39°58′0″N 75°9′36″W / 39.96667°N 75.16000°WCoordinates: 39°58′0″N 75°9′36″W / 39.96667°N 75.16000°W |
| Built | 1892 |
| Architect |
Willis G. Hale George F. Payne and Company |
| Architectural style | Late Victorian |
| NRHP Reference # | 02001427 |
| Added to NRHP | November 27, 2002 |
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| Audio | |
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 The Divine Lorraine and development on North Broad, Radio Times With Marty Moss-Coane, 49:03, November 2012 |
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| Video | |
 Historic Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia, PA, Wanda Kaluza, 2:26, August 2011. |
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Divine Lorraine, Antiquity Echos, 4:20, October 2011. |
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 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 was begun, one of the City of Philadelphia's massive reconstruction projects between 2015-2035.
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.
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. Not only were construction materials and techniques not capable of supporting taller buildings, but the inconvenience of the many flights of stairs to get to higher floors in the absence of an elevator was significant.
The Lorraine, at ten stories tall, was one of the first high-rise apartment buildings in the city. The building's architect, Willis G. Hale, also designed an earlier high-rise apartment building at 22nd and Chestnut Streets, which stood from 1889 until its demolition in 1945. Hale designed many other buildings around the city, but quickly fell out of favor at the turn of the century when most patrons rejected his highly stylized Victorian designs for the sleeker style of modern skyscrapers, and most of his landmarks had been torn down after the Great Depression.
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