‘Morrison Hotel’ Building in Los Angeles Destroyed by Fire

The building that once housed the Morrison Hotel — featured on the iconic cover of the Doors’ 1970 album of the same name — suffered significant damages Thursday after a fire tore through the downtown Los Angeles property.

No one was injured in the blaze, which caused the roof to collapse on the 110-year-old, four-story, mostly vacant building; once a transient hotel — which it was when the Doors were photographed there — the Morrison Hotel had been vacant for over a decade, although the houseless frequently squatted in the structure.

“There were some unhoused persons exiting the building,” an LAFD spokesperson said following the fire Thursday (via CBS News). “We did have firefighters place ground ladders to fire escapes because they could see there were a couple of people coming to the fire escapes.”

Photographer Henry Diltz, who captured Jim Morrison and company inside the hotel for the album cover, would later co-found the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York. In a 2020 remembrance of his famed photograph, Diltz wrote, “We were at a transient hotel in Downtown LA on Hope Street. The Doors didn’t have permission to take pictures, so when the lobby was empty, they ran in quickly and sat behind the window. One roll of film shot before we got asked to leave.”