The
Winecoff Hotel, today the
Ellis
Hotel, is located at 176
Peachtree Street NW, in
downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Designed by
William Lee Stoddart, the
15-story building opened in 1913.
It is located next to the former Macy's
(at 180
Peachtree Street), which was built as the flagship Davison's, and
just south from the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel
(easily identifiable by its cylindrical glass
design). It was listed on the
National Register of
Historic Places on March 31, 2009.
Fire
Historical marker
The Winecoff is best known for a
fire that
occurred there on
December 7,
1946, in which 119 people died. It remains the
deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history, and prompted many changes in
building codes. Guests at the hotel
that night included teenagers attending a Tri-Y Youth Conference,
Christmas shoppers, and people in town to see
Song of the South.
Arnold Hardy, a 26-year-old graduate student at Georgia
Tech
, became the first amateur to
win a Pulitzer Prize in photography for his snapshot of a woman (later
identified as survivor Daisy McCumber) in mid-air after jumping
from the 11th floor of the hotel during the fire.
Reopenings
In April 1951, the hotel reopened as the
Peachtree Hotel on
Peachtree, and was now equipped with both
fire alarms and
fire
escapes. In 1967, it was donated to the Georgia Baptist
Convention for housing the
elderly, and then
repeatedly sold to a series of potential developers.
After over two decades of vacancy a $23 million
renovation project began in April 2006. The
project restored the building into a
boutique luxury hotel, called
the
Ellis Hotel after the
street that runs along the north side of the
building. It was reopened on
October 1,
2007.
References
- Peachtree Burning
- "Pulitzer Photo" by Sam Heys
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