On 6 July, Haiti’s iconic Hotel Oloffson was completely destroyed in a fire probably set by one of the gangs that control Port-au-Prince. Like many foreign correspondents, LAB’s Nick Caistor used to stay there. He explains its significance.
The Hotel Oloffson, one of the Haitian capital’s most iconic buildings, was burned down on July 6 2025, reportedly by one of the armed gangs that now control most of Port-au-Prince. The Oloffson, with its distinctive ‘gingerbread’ latticed wooden architecture, tropical gardens, and swimming pool, was a legendary haven in the centre of the city.
Just a few minutes’ walk from the Champ de Mars and the presidential palace, the hotel had a long and colourful history. Originally built in the late 19th century as a presidential summer residence, it served as a hospital during the occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 by the US Marine Corps. It was then bought by a Swedish sailor called Oloffson, who turned it into a hotel.
In the last decades of the 20th century, it saw many famous visitors, including Jackie Onassis and Mick Jagger, and perhaps most notably the English writer Graham Greene, who made it the focus of his novel The Comedians, about the brutal Papa Doc Duvalier regime and his Tonton Macoute thugs.
Aubelin Jolicoeur, the real-life person on whom Greene based one of the characters in the novel, continued to haunt the long mahogany bar in the main dining room for years afterwards, telling his stories to anyone who would listen, and helping create the hotel’s special atmosphere, somewhere between fiction and reality.
After the end of the Duvalier regime in the mid-1980s, it became the hotel of choice for foreign correspondents reporting on the troubled times Haiti was going through. Local politicians and experts were always happy to come to tell their stories and gossip there, usually over its famous rum punch at the end of the day.
Another character who seemed larger than life was the manager for two decades, Richard Auguste Morse. The son of a Haitian singer and a US professor, he managed (and later owned) the hotel in a swashbuckling, idiosyncratic style. He devoted himself to training to become a voodoo priest or houngan, and leading a band that played mizic raisin music weekly, bringing anyone who was anyone to the hotel. It seemed that whatever violence and catastrophe was going on outside, within the walls of the hotel they could find a safe refuge.
Throughout the 1990s I regularly reported from the Oloffson. Despite often suffering power cuts, and having only a very unreliable internet connection, it remained one the most vibrant places in the city. I was on the coach chartered from there to catch the last flight out of Haiti before the US invasion in September 1994 which removed the ruling military junta and led to Jean-Bertrand Aristide being re-installed as president.
His government, followed by that of his protegé René Preval (until 2011), together with the UN mission MINUSTAH, brought relative stability to this country of 11 million, although Haiti remained the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. But even during this period it was plain that Haiti was increasingly a staging post for illegal drugs shipments to the United States, while the flow of firearms in the opposite direction meant the official security forces were outnumbered by former tontons, ex-army personnel and criminal gangs.
Earthquake
The disaster that destroyed this period of relative calm came in January 2010, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, with its epicentre about 15 west of Port-au-Prince killed more than 200,000 people and destroyed many buildings, including the parliament and the capital’s other most iconic monument, the gleaming white presidential palace, which collapsed like a huge wedding cake dropped on the floor.
Following the earthquake, the political situation in Haiti became increasingly chaotic. Successive governments were accused of misuse of billions of dollars intended for reconstruction efforts, and increasingly lacked popular support. This situation reached crisis point in July 2021 when president Moïse was assassinated, allegedly by Colombian hitmen.
Since then, Haiti has been effectively without any legitimate government. Since October 2024 armed groups have taken control of Port-au-Prince and other main towns, killing and kidnapping people, looting properties and businesses, extorting money and controlling all main roads. A June 2025 UN report estimates that almost 5,000 people have been killed by the gangs over the past ten months.
The end of the Hotel
By the end of 2022, Richard Morse had left for the United States for safety reasons, and the Oloffson became a sad shadow of its former self. It finally closed in October 2024. Steadily wider areas of Port-au-Prince have been taken over by the gangs, and during the weekend of 6–7 July an arson attack on the Oloffson blamed on one such group is reported to have destroyed most of it, and with it a legend.
But as Richard Morse himself told the press following the fire: ‘So many people are dying and being raped and losing everything that I don’t want the focus to be on the hotel.’
He added: ‘There’s no life without hope, so we have to consider bringing Haiti back and bringing the hotel back and bringing the art and the culture back.’
