In Haiti today, gang warfare and the collapse of government has created a human rights crisis of huge proportions. Add to the present violence longstanding issues of poverty and environmental degradation — with the lasting impacts of colonialism — and it becomes clear that the once proud standard bearer of Caribbean freedom is in deep trouble.
Not surprisingly, the country’s tourist industry no longer functions. The capital, Port-au-Prince, is off limits, and visitors are warned to stay away. It is all the more poignant — but perhaps valuable — to recall that Haiti was once, and in living memory, a byword for Caribbean tourism and hospitality. Documentaries from the 1950s and 1960s promoted the country as a welcoming and glamorous destination, rich in culture.
Introduction to Haiti depicts a clean and orderly Port-au-Prince, highlighting its gleaming white presidential palace and its imposing cathedral, its bustling covered market and its teaching hospital. None of these structures survives today, most having succumbed to the devastating earthquake of January 2010.
Of all Haiti’s disasters, the earthquake was the most destructive — reducing much of Port-au-Prince to rubble within seconds. And yet one building, which was central to the short-lived belle epoque of the mid-20th century, survived almost unscathed: the iconic Hotel Oloffson.
This urban landmark, constructed largely of wood and brick, remained standing while modern concrete buildings around collapsed. It is still intact, surrounded by the ruined landscape of the city.
The Oloffson was not always a hotel. Its splendour reflects the prestige of its original owners, and a fine example of an architectural trend that is particularly Haitian. Its construction was commissioned in 1896 by Demosthenes Simon Sam — scion of a dynasty of political heavyweights, and son of Tirésias Simon Sam (Haiti’s president, 1896–1902).
Situated in the upmarket Pacot district, the family home was close to the centre of government, but luxuriously spacious and set in tropical gardens. It was also beautifully ornate, resplendent with wooden fretwork and latticework decorating its large doors and windows, its porches and open verandas.
The style would later be known in the 1950s as Gingerbread. But when the Oloffson was designed, it drew on trends popularised in the United States during the 1860s and 1870s — now categorised as Carpenter Gothic, due to the elaborate woodwork.
Gingerbread architecture can be found across the Caribbean (Trinidad, Martinique, and others). But Port-au-Prince had an unusual concentration of mansions built in this style for wealthy families by craftsmen influenced by techniques in America or Europe.
The Sams’ occupation of the house came to an abrupt end when Tirésias’ son, President Vilbrun Sam, was murdered by an enraged mob in July 1915. Almost immediately, US marines landed —ordered to quell the insurrection by a US administration fearful of anarchy — and the house was requisitioned for use as a military hospital. During the American occupation, which lasted until 1934, a wing was added to the main building, which in subsequent years proved invaluable.
When the US forces departed, the Sam family rented their home to a German-Swedish sea captain named Werner Oloffson. He was rarely seen there, but his wife oversaw its transformation into a 44-bed hotel.
And so, 90 years ago, in early 1935, the Oloffson opened its doors to an early group of American visitors — anthropologists, entrepreneurs, and artists — who were curious about a hitherto little-known Caribbean neighbour.
In 1946, the widowed Margot Oloffson sold the lease to the first of several unconventional hoteliers, Maurice de Young, who — according to The Los Angeles Times — raised alligators in the swimming pool.
During de Young’s tenancy, and that of Roger Coster and Al Seitz, the Oloffson became notorious for its exotic, bohemian, and slightly louche ambiance. A succession of A-list literary celebrities and actors stayed in what John Dos Passos’ companion described as “a huge rococo rambling palace with barely a dozen people wandering around very chummily”.
Haiti was once, and in living memory, a byword for Caribbean tourism and hospitality
John Gielgud, Truman Capote, Noel Coward, and Irving Berlin all signed the visitors’ book in the hotel that Coster joked was “a magnificent run-down barracks for derelicts”. The charm did not lie in efficient service or spotless accommodation — it was all about its languorous atmosphere, tinged with permissiveness, and the thrill of Vodou folklore.
Rooms, including those left by the American occupation, were named after their illustrious occupants. It did not really matter that they could be rather dark and creaky, with unreliable plumbing. It was, after all, a home to “drunks, criminals, the sexually obsessed, crazies, remittance folks, mistresses and gigolos and bemused adventure seekers”, as Herbert Gold wrote.
With the rise to power of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1958, politics, poverty and human rights deteriorated dramatically, and tourists largely stayed away. The one notable exception was English novelist Graham Greene, who visited Haiti in the 1950s and then 1965. He immortalised the Oloffson — renamed the Trianon, and run by a world-weary hero during the darkest days of the dictatorship.
A classic Greene novel exploring love, commitment, and despair, The Comedians (1966) depicted the hotel as a haunted house:
“With its towers and balconies and wooden fretwork decorations it had the air at night of a Charles Addams house in a number of the New Yorkers. You expected a witch to open the door to you or a maniac butler, with a bat dangling from the chandelier behind him.”
Papa Doc did not appreciate Greene’s account of his despotic regime, and the film version of The Comedians, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, was wisely shot in the African state of Dahomey — much to Al Seitz’s relief.
But Greene’s evocation of the hotel remained fixed in the popular imagination, and the Oloffson became inseparable from one of Greene’s most memorable characters — the all-knowing and creepy Petit Pierre (aka Aubelin Jolicoeur), a gossipy journalist who frequented the bar and allegedly reported back to the dictatorship.
When I first went to Haiti in 1985, the hotel fully lived up to this image: I swam in the pool where once there were alligators, and where Greene imagined the dumped corpse of one of Papa Doc’s political adversaries. The sinister Jolicoeur was inevitably holding court at the bar.
From 1987, the Oloffson was run by Richard Morse — an American-Haitian with family links reaching back to the Sam dynasty. For many years, Morse navigated the turbulent course of Haitian politics — providing a haven for journalists and cultural tourists, and courageously confronting at least one of the military juntas that briefly ruled the country.
He also explicitly strengthened the link between the hotel and Vodou culture — decorating the place with Vodou-inspired artworks, and performing every week with his band RAM in a blend of rock and religious folklore.
The crisis that surrounded the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 and the ensuing gang violence proved too much even for Morse, however, and he relocated with his family to New Orleans. It is not clear whether the hotel is now open for business, even if there are any visitors in search of a room. Online reviews have dried up.
All this is deeply sad. But there is perhaps hope in the fact that the Oloffson, with all its gingerbread exuberance and creaking charm, is at least still standing. When Haiti emerges from this latest chapter of instability and violence, the hotel will — it must be hoped — be ready to welcome new guests who are drawn to its history of eccentricity and resilience.