Los Angeles building featured on Doors’ ‘Morrison Hotel’ cover burns

A boarded-up former hotel in downtown Los Angeles that was featured on the cover of the 1970 Doors album “Morrison Hotel” was engulfed by a fire Thursday.

The fire brought down the building’s roof but did not result in any injuries, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

The building, in the heart of the city’s Skid Row neighborhood, had not been used commercially for more than 15 years, the department said. But about 25 people who were homeless had been congregating inside before the fire, said Mark Dyer, vice president of operations for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which owns the building.

The city Fire Department, which sent more than 100 firefighters to battle the blaze Thursday morning, said it had rescued three people. A large group evacuated on their own, according to the Fire Department.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.

It took firefighters more than 90 minutes to extinguish the fire, according to the Fire Department, which released footage of large clouds of dark smoke gushing out of the brick building’s upper floors as flames lit up its window frames.

The fire did not spread to other buildings, according to the Fire Department, which had used the building as a training site in recent years.

It was also unclear whether the nearly 50,000-square-foot structure, which was built in 1914, could be salvaged after the fire, said Ged Kenslea, a spokesperson for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

“It’s probably a complete loss,” Dyer said.

The foundation, which bought the building for $11.9 million in December 2023, had hoped to turn it into a 111-unit affordable-housing complex. It said it had tried to secure the building in recent months by placing steel plates on its doors.

People wanting to enter the building apparently used power tools to break in through the basement, using a narrow crawl space to get inside, Dyer said.

A half-century ago, the building was etched into rock ’n’ roll history after music photographer Henry Diltz photographed it for the cover of “Morrison Hotel” — a riff-heavy Doors record that featured “Roadhouse Blues” and “Peace Frog.”

In the image, the band, framed by a large window, looks blankly ahead from behind two signs: one reading “Passenger Loading Only,” the other advertising “Rooms From $2.50 Up.”

Jim Morrison, the band’s lead vocalist, who died 19 months later, stands in the middle, over the sign advertising cheap rooms.

A light, which Diltz said was for the elevator, creates a halo above the band. The words “Morrison Hotel” curve over its four members in blocky red and white letters on the window pane.

In an interview Friday, Diltz said he was sad to hear about the fire, calling the building a “great old structure.” He said he hoped it would be restored.

“It’s such a historic place, a historic name,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t disappear.”

John Densmore, the band’s drummer, also expressed dismay over the fire, writing in an email that he had visited the building after the AIDS Healthcare Foundation had acquired it, and that he was certain that Morrison “would’ve been pleased” about the plan to repurpose the building as affordable housing.

The cover photo almost did not happen, Diltz recalled.

The Doors had been struggling to come up with a title for their new album when an idea occurred to Ray Manzarek, the band’s keyboardist: He and his wife had passed the Morrison Hotel while driving through Los Angeles. Perhaps it would make for a compelling cover.

So, on an afternoon in December 1969, the band piled into a van and drove to the hotel, then a “funky old flop house,” as Diltz characterized it. But a receptionist in the lobby said photography was not allowed.

Diltz, determined to still use the hotel, led the group outside the building to try to take a picture from the street. And, as luck would have it, as the band members set up to shoot from the sidewalk, Diltz noticed that the elevator light inside the empty lobby had turned on.

The receptionist had left his perch.

“‘Quick, run in there, you guys,’” Diltz said he told the band.

“And they ran in and got behind the window,” he continued.

The band did not have time to carefully choreograph the picture.

“They just hit the right places,” Diltz recalled, adding, “I took one roll of film. Five minutes. And we got the hell out of there.”