The historic Morrison Hotel, made famous by The Doors, has been destroyed by a fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department have confirmed.
The hotel, the downtown LA establishment, which is located at 1246 S. Hope St, caught on fire on St Stephen's Day, which led to over 100 firefighters and 17 fire crews called to control the blaze.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt. However, a number of homeless people only managed to escape using the fire department fires.
This hotel is famous for giving the Doors' 1970 album its name, having been first discovered by keyboard Ray Manzarek while he was driving around, with photographer Harry Diltz on the scene to capture a snap of the iconic image of the band sitting in the lobby window.
Speaking to Fox 11, David Ortiz of the Los Angeles Fire Department said: “In the fire department, we say there are no vacant buildings in the City of Los Angeles".
He continued: “A lot of the large unhoused community uses these vacant buildings as their temporary residences. Several dozen were seen self-evacuating at the time of the fire".
This property was bought in 2013 for close to $12 million by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who had planned to turn it into more than 100 affordable housing units.
The property which had been originally lying vacant for 10 years, had been "red tagged" by the city, which means it was not considered suitable for living in.
"Last week when we cleared the building, there were about 15 [homeless people inside]," the foundation's Mark Dyer said to Fox 11. "As soon as we secure the building, the homeless come up with power tools within hours and just cut the locks off".
Speaking of The Doors, Simple Minds Jim Kerr received the prestigious Gold Medal for Best Documentary in the Culture & Arts, for his first documentary: 'Jim Kerr On Jim Morrison' back in April.
Find out more on this from Nova here.
