Dunbar Hotel
Encyclopedia
The Dunbar Hotel, originally known as the Hotel Somerville, was the focal point of the Central Avenue
African-American community in Los Angeles, California
during the 1930s and 1940s. Built in 1928, it was known for its first year as the Hotel Somerville. Upon its opening, it hosted the first national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) to be held in the western United States. In 1930, the hotel was renamed the Dunbar, and it became the most prestigious hotel in LA's African-American community. In the early 1930s, a nightclub opened at the Dunbar, and it became the center of the Central Avenue jazz scene in the 1930s and 1940s. The Dunbar hosted Duke Ellington
, Cab Calloway
, Billie Holiday
, Louis Armstrong
, Lionel Hampton
, Count Basie
, Lena Horne
and many other jazz legends. Other noteworthy people who stayed at the Dunbar include W. E. B. Du Bois, Joe Louis
, Ray Charles
and Thurgood Marshall
. Former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson
also ran a nightclub at the Dunbar in the 1930s.
As of October 2008, the Dunbar Hotel is no longer a hotel, and currently has 32 residents living in its 73 apartments. Due to nonpayment of taxes, the building is likely to be foreclosed into City of Los Angeles ownership.
. The hotel was built entirely by black contractors, laborers, and craftsmen and financed by black community members.
For many years, the Somerville was the only major hotel in Los Angeles that welcomed blacks, and it quickly became the place to stay for visiting black dignitaries. In 1928, the Somerville housed delegates to the first NAACP convention held in the western United States. In 1929, when Oscar DePriest (the first African American to serve in Congress
in the 20th century) visited Los Angeles, he was met at the station "by a large delegation of colored people, who formed a parade and escorted him to the Dunbar Hotel."
The hotel was known for its physical amenities. Its Art Deco
lobby had a spectacular chandelier (also in the Art Deco style), Spanish arcade-like windows, tiled walls and a flagstone floor. The lobby was said to look like "a regal Spanish arcade
, with open balconies and steel grillwork, as opulent as the Granada Building at Lafayette Park." One person who was present at the hotel's groundbreaking ceremony recalled it was “a palace compared to what we had been used to.”
The hotel came to represent a level of achievement among the black community. Historian Lonnie G. Bunch III said, "On the one hand, blacks were not allowed to stay at major hotels. But with enough financial wherewithal and a strong sense of community a black man could build a large hotel." Unlike earlier segregated hotels and boarding houses, the Somerville (and later the Dunbar) offered luxury amenities – a restaurant, cocktail lounge and barbershop. One person noted, "The Dunbar symbolizes luxury and respect even in the worst of times." Roy Wilkins
wrote in the New York Amsterdam News of the hotel's luxury and service: "Everything was just the opposite of what we had come to expect in ‘Negro’ hotels."
The Somerville/Dunbar also played an important role in anchoring the new Central Avenue community. Prior to 1928, the black community in Los Angeles had been centered around 12th Street and Central Avenue, near Downtown Los Angeles
. Somerville was the first to build a major structure so far south in the 42nd Street neighborhood, and soon other businesses followed.
After the stock market crash in 1929, Somerville was forced to sell the hotel to a syndicate of white investors. The passing of the hotel from its original black ownership was a disappointment for a community that viewed the hotel as a symbol of black achievement. The hotel was renamed the Dunbar in 1929, in honor of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
In 1930, the hotel was purchased for $100,000 by Lucius W. Lomax, Sr. (1879-1961). With ownership being restored to an African-American, the “debilitating impact of John Somerville's loss was reversed, and the hotel once again became the gem of black Los Angeles.”
During Somerville's ownership, there was no nightclub or live music at the hotel. It was not until February 1931 that the Dunbar was issued a permit "to conduct a cabaret in the dining room." Though he had sold the hotel, Somerville and others in the neighborhood opposed the establishment of a cabaret in his hotel, stating that such a use "would cast a lasting stigma on it."
The Dunbar became known in the 1930s and 1940s as "the hub of Los Angeles black culture," and "the heart of Saturday night Los Angeles." In its heyday, it was known as "a West Coast mixture of the Waldorf-Astoria and the Cotton Club
." The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
described the Dunbar this way:
The Dunbar hosted prominent African Americans traveling to Los Angeles, including Duke Ellington
, Joe Louis
, Louis Armstrong
, Lena Horne
, Paul Robeson
, Marian Anderson
, and Josephine Baker
. The Dunbar was “the gathering spot for the crème de la crème of black society, the hotel for performers who could entertain in white hotels but not sleep in them.”
The Dunbar also became the place where African American political and intellectual leaders and writers, including Langston Hughes
, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche
, Thurgood Marshall
and James Weldon Johnson
, gathered. It has been described as “a place where the future of black America was discussed every night of the week in the lobby.” Celes King, whose family owned the Dunbar in its heyday, said, “They were very serious discussions between people like W. E. B. Du Bois (founder of the NAACP), doctors, lawyers, educators and other professionals. This was the place where many of them put together the plans to improve the life style of their people.”
One of the regulars at the Dunbar in its heyday was future mayor Tom Bradley
, then a young police officer. Bradley would stop in for coffee and conversation. Bradley later recalled, “I remember, from the days of my childhood, walking down the avenue, just to get a look at some of those famous superstars.”
More than anything, the Dunbar is remembered for its role in the Central Avenue jazz scene. The nightclub at the Dunbar was the home-away-from-home for, and the stage for performances by, artists including Duke Ellington
, Louis Armstrong
, Louis Jordan
, Count Basie
, Lionel Hampton
, Lena Horne
, Ella Fitzgerald
, Billie Holiday
, Cab Calloway
, and Nat King Cole
. Even Ray Charles
stayed at the Dunbar when he first moved to Los Angeles.
In addition to the main nightclub, former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson
opened his Showboat nightclub at the Dunbar in the 1930s. "Jack Johnson … ran his Showboat nightclub in one corner, and black bands practiced on the mezzanine for acts across town later that night."
The hotel was also popular with the white community, and many from Hollywood spent their Saturday nights at the Dunbar and surrounding clubs. Celes King recalled once when Bing Crosby
bounced a check at the hotel, and her father (the hotel's owner) kept Crosby's check. "It was a big joke between them."
The neighborhood was also the home of other famous jazz clubs, including Club Alabam (next door), the Last Word (across the street), and the Downbeat (nearby). Even local musicians who were playing at other Central Avenue clubs would gather at the Dunbar. Lee Young, the drummer who led a band at the Club Alabam, recalled: “The fellows in the band – Charles Mingus
, Art Pepper
, all of us – would hang out between sets next door at the Dunbar . . . Between the club and the hotel you'd see movie stars and all the big show business names of the day.”
Musician Jack Kelson recalled the sidewalk in front of the Dunbar as the most desirable place to hang out on the city's coolest street. He said, "That's my favorite spot on Central Avenue, that spot in the front of the Dunbar Hotel, because that to me was the hippest, most intimate, key spot of all the activity. That's where all the night people hung out: the sportsmen, the businessmen, the dancers, everybody in show business, people who were somebody stayed at the hotel. … [B]y far that block, that Dunbar Hotel, for me was it. And it was it for, it seemed to me, everybody else. Sooner or later you walked in front of that hotel, and that's where everybody congregated."
Another writer recalled the area around the Dunbar as "a place where people love to congregate and have a good time, check out the new models and pick up on the latest lingo." The Dunbar built a reputation in the 1930s as "the symbol of L.A.'s black nightlife," as "regular jamming sessions and meetings in the hotel lobby elevated the structure to a practically mythical status." Lionel Hampton
had fond memories of jam sessions and practices on the Dunbar's mezzanine. Hampton recalled, "Everybody that was anybody showed up at the Dunbar. I remember a chauffeur would drive Stepin Fetchit
, the movie star, up to the curb in a big Packard, and he'd look out the window at all the folks."
In his autobiography, Buck Clayton
shared some of his memories of the Dunbar. He recalled the Dunbar as “jumping” with loads of people trying to get a glimpse of the celebrities, and parties thrown by Duke Ellington and his guys with “chicks and champagne everywhere.” Clayton recalled an instance when Ellington and his orchestra came to Los Angeles shortly after the 1932 release of the song It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
. Ellington’s band was in the Dunbar restaurant when the song came on the jukebox. It was the first time since leaving New York that they had heard their recording. Clayton described the band's response: “So much rhythm I've never heard, as guys were beating on the tables, instrument cases or anything else they could beat on with knives, forks, rolled-up newspapers or anything else they could find to make rhythm. It was absolutely crazy.”
The Dunbar was also known for its food. One musician recalled they “had good old southern-fried everything.”
, the Dunbar was converted into a hostel for members of the Peace Mission Movement
of Father Divine
. In 1934, Lucius Lomax sold the hotel to the Peace Mission. The hotel staff was discharged, and the building was renovated as lodging for the mission's members. The Peace Mission Movement, run by Father Divine, operated a multi-racial religious colony at the Dunbar, with members using the dining room (formerly the site of a cabaret) for Holy Communion ceremonies. The Dunbar was sold to the Neslon family in the late 1930s, and it resumed its role as the cultural center of the Los Angeles black community.
, and others followed. As one writer put it: “When the barriers against integration began to crumble in the late 1950s, so did the Dunbar Hotel.”
Bernard Johnson bought the Dunbar in 1968, but the hotel continued to lose money, and Johnson closed the hotel's doors in 1974. While closed in 1974, comedian Rudy Ray Moore
used the hotel extensively in his low budget film Dolemite
, and in 1976, the movie A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich
was filmed at the Dunbar. Owner Bernard Johnson also opened a museum of black culture for a time. But for most of the years from 1974 to 1987, the building was vacant and declined drastically, as transients began using it for shelter, and the building suffered from graffiti, broken windows and litter.
A renovation effort was started in 1979, but stopped when city funding ceased. By 1987, the Dunbar was marred by graffiti and generally tarnished by neglect. That year, a plan was announced to convert the Dunbar into low-income housing units with a museum of black culture on the ground floor. The 115 hotel rooms on the top three floors were gutted and replaced with 72 apartments. The mezzanine, lobby and basement retained their original décor and were converted into a museum and cultural center. The project was funded in large part with city redevelopment funds at a cost of $4.2 million.
In 1990, the Dunbar re-opened as a 73-unit apartment building for low-income senior citizens and museum of black history. Delegates from the NAACP national convention helped rededicate the Dunbar in July 1990 following its renovation. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley attended the rededication ceremony and praised the efforts to “breathe new life and vigor into this magnificent hotel.”
The Dunbar hosted a jazz show in 1991, attended by noted music journalist Leonard Feather
. Feather wrote that the event was like “a visit to a haunted house.” When one of the musicians played a Duke Ellington theme, Feather said “you could look up at the balcony and see, in your mind's eye, Duke himself at a piano on the mezzanine, working out an arrangement for tomorrow's show.”
By 1997, the neighborhood around the Dunbar was 75% Latino, and by 2006 the neighborhood was predominantly Latino and poor, with most of the nearby storefronts having their signs written in Spanish.
in 1976.
Central Avenue (Los Angeles)
Central Avenue is a major north-south thoroughfare in the central portion of the Los Angeles, California metropolitan area. Located just to the west of the Alameda Corridor, it runs from the eastern end of the Los Angeles Civic Center south, ending at Del Amo Boulevard in Carson...
African-American community in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
during the 1930s and 1940s. Built in 1928, it was known for its first year as the Hotel Somerville. Upon its opening, it hosted the first national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
(NAACP) to be held in the western United States. In 1930, the hotel was renamed the Dunbar, and it became the most prestigious hotel in LA's African-American community. In the early 1930s, a nightclub opened at the Dunbar, and it became the center of the Central Avenue jazz scene in the 1930s and 1940s. The Dunbar hosted Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
, Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
, Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
and many other jazz legends. Other noteworthy people who stayed at the Dunbar include W. E. B. Du Bois, Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
, Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
and Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
. Former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
also ran a nightclub at the Dunbar in the 1930s.
As of October 2008, the Dunbar Hotel is no longer a hotel, and currently has 32 residents living in its 73 apartments. Due to nonpayment of taxes, the building is likely to be foreclosed into City of Los Angeles ownership.
Hotel Somerville opens in 1928
The hotel was built in 1928 by John and Vada Somerville, socially and politically prominent black Angelenos. John Somerville was the first black to graduate from the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. The hotel was built entirely by black contractors, laborers, and craftsmen and financed by black community members.
For many years, the Somerville was the only major hotel in Los Angeles that welcomed blacks, and it quickly became the place to stay for visiting black dignitaries. In 1928, the Somerville housed delegates to the first NAACP convention held in the western United States. In 1929, when Oscar DePriest (the first African American to serve in Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
in the 20th century) visited Los Angeles, he was met at the station "by a large delegation of colored people, who formed a parade and escorted him to the Dunbar Hotel."
The hotel was known for its physical amenities. Its Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
lobby had a spectacular chandelier (also in the Art Deco style), Spanish arcade-like windows, tiled walls and a flagstone floor. The lobby was said to look like "a regal Spanish arcade
Arcade (architecture)
An arcade is a succession of arches, each counterthrusting the next, supported by columns or piers or a covered walk enclosed by a line of such arches on one or both sides. In warmer or wet climates, exterior arcades provide shelter for pedestrians....
, with open balconies and steel grillwork, as opulent as the Granada Building at Lafayette Park." One person who was present at the hotel's groundbreaking ceremony recalled it was “a palace compared to what we had been used to.”
The hotel came to represent a level of achievement among the black community. Historian Lonnie G. Bunch III said, "On the one hand, blacks were not allowed to stay at major hotels. But with enough financial wherewithal and a strong sense of community a black man could build a large hotel." Unlike earlier segregated hotels and boarding houses, the Somerville (and later the Dunbar) offered luxury amenities – a restaurant, cocktail lounge and barbershop. One person noted, "The Dunbar symbolizes luxury and respect even in the worst of times." Roy Wilkins
Roy Wilkins
Roy Wilkins was a prominent civil rights activist in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. Wilkins' most notable role was in his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ....
wrote in the New York Amsterdam News of the hotel's luxury and service: "Everything was just the opposite of what we had come to expect in ‘Negro’ hotels."
The Somerville/Dunbar also played an important role in anchoring the new Central Avenue community. Prior to 1928, the black community in Los Angeles had been centered around 12th Street and Central Avenue, near Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...
. Somerville was the first to build a major structure so far south in the 42nd Street neighborhood, and soon other businesses followed.
After the stock market crash in 1929, Somerville was forced to sell the hotel to a syndicate of white investors. The passing of the hotel from its original black ownership was a disappointment for a community that viewed the hotel as a symbol of black achievement. The hotel was renamed the Dunbar in 1929, in honor of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
In 1930, the hotel was purchased for $100,000 by Lucius W. Lomax, Sr. (1879-1961). With ownership being restored to an African-American, the “debilitating impact of John Somerville's loss was reversed, and the hotel once again became the gem of black Los Angeles.”
During Somerville's ownership, there was no nightclub or live music at the hotel. It was not until February 1931 that the Dunbar was issued a permit "to conduct a cabaret in the dining room." Though he had sold the hotel, Somerville and others in the neighborhood opposed the establishment of a cabaret in his hotel, stating that such a use "would cast a lasting stigma on it."
Hub of the Central Avenue scene
Cotton Club
The Cotton Club was a famous night club in Harlem, New York City that operated during Prohibition that included jazz music. While the club featured many of the greatest African American entertainers of the era, such as Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, Count Basie, Bessie Smith,...
." The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published Monday through Friday in the afternoon, and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It was part of the Hearst syndicate. The afternoon Herald-Express and the morning Examiner, both of which had been publishing in...
described the Dunbar this way:
”It was once the most glorious place on 'the Avenue.' At the Dunbar Hotel … you could dance to the sounds of Cab CallowayCab CallowayCabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
, laugh till your stomach hurt with Redd FoxxRedd FoxxJohn Elroy Sanford , better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American comedian and actor, best known for his starring role on the sitcom Sanford and Son.-Early life:...
and maybe, just maybe, get a room near Billie HolidayBillie HolidayBillie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
or Duke EllingtonDuke EllingtonEdward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
.”
The Dunbar hosted prominent African Americans traveling to Los Angeles, including Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
, Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...
, and Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
. The Dunbar was “the gathering spot for the crème de la crème of black society, the hotel for performers who could entertain in white hotels but not sleep in them.”
The Dunbar also became the place where African American political and intellectual leaders and writers, including Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche
Ralph Bunche
Ralph Johnson Bunche or 1904December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first person of color to be so honored in the history of the Prize...
, Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
and James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...
, gathered. It has been described as “a place where the future of black America was discussed every night of the week in the lobby.” Celes King, whose family owned the Dunbar in its heyday, said, “They were very serious discussions between people like W. E. B. Du Bois (founder of the NAACP), doctors, lawyers, educators and other professionals. This was the place where many of them put together the plans to improve the life style of their people.”
One of the regulars at the Dunbar in its heyday was future mayor Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, then a young police officer. Bradley would stop in for coffee and conversation. Bradley later recalled, “I remember, from the days of my childhood, walking down the avenue, just to get a look at some of those famous superstars.”
More than anything, the Dunbar is remembered for its role in the Central Avenue jazz scene. The nightclub at the Dunbar was the home-away-from-home for, and the stage for performances by, artists including Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Louis Jordan
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
, Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
, Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
, and Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
. Even Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
stayed at the Dunbar when he first moved to Los Angeles.
In addition to the main nightclub, former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
opened his Showboat nightclub at the Dunbar in the 1930s. "Jack Johnson … ran his Showboat nightclub in one corner, and black bands practiced on the mezzanine for acts across town later that night."
The hotel was also popular with the white community, and many from Hollywood spent their Saturday nights at the Dunbar and surrounding clubs. Celes King recalled once when Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
bounced a check at the hotel, and her father (the hotel's owner) kept Crosby's check. "It was a big joke between them."
The neighborhood was also the home of other famous jazz clubs, including Club Alabam (next door), the Last Word (across the street), and the Downbeat (nearby). Even local musicians who were playing at other Central Avenue clubs would gather at the Dunbar. Lee Young, the drummer who led a band at the Club Alabam, recalled: “The fellows in the band – Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
, Art Pepper
Art Pepper
Art Pepper , born Arthur Edward Pepper, Jr., was an American alto saxophonist and clarinetist.About Pepper, Scott Yanow of All Music stated, "In the 1950s he was one of the few altoists that was able to develop his own sound despite the dominant influence of Charlie Parker" and: "When Art Pepper...
, all of us – would hang out between sets next door at the Dunbar . . . Between the club and the hotel you'd see movie stars and all the big show business names of the day.”
Another writer recalled the area around the Dunbar as "a place where people love to congregate and have a good time, check out the new models and pick up on the latest lingo." The Dunbar built a reputation in the 1930s as "the symbol of L.A.'s black nightlife," as "regular jamming sessions and meetings in the hotel lobby elevated the structure to a practically mythical status." Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
had fond memories of jam sessions and practices on the Dunbar's mezzanine. Hampton recalled, "Everybody that was anybody showed up at the Dunbar. I remember a chauffeur would drive Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry....
, the movie star, up to the curb in a big Packard, and he'd look out the window at all the folks."
In his autobiography, Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong...
shared some of his memories of the Dunbar. He recalled the Dunbar as “jumping” with loads of people trying to get a glimpse of the celebrities, and parties thrown by Duke Ellington and his guys with “chicks and champagne everywhere.” Clayton recalled an instance when Ellington and his orchestra came to Los Angeles shortly after the 1932 release of the song It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
"It Don't Mean a Thing " is a 1931 composition by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Irving Mills, now accepted as a jazz standard. The music was written and arranged by Ellington in August 1931 during intermissions at Chicago's Lincoln Tavern and was first recorded by Ellington and his orchestra for...
. Ellington’s band was in the Dunbar restaurant when the song came on the jukebox. It was the first time since leaving New York that they had heard their recording. Clayton described the band's response: “So much rhythm I've never heard, as guys were beating on the tables, instrument cases or anything else they could beat on with knives, forks, rolled-up newspapers or anything else they could find to make rhythm. It was absolutely crazy.”
The Dunbar was also known for its food. One musician recalled they “had good old southern-fried everything.”
The Peace Mission years
For a brief period during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the Dunbar was converted into a hostel for members of the Peace Mission Movement
International Peace Mission movement
The International Peace Mission movement was the religious movement started by Father Divine, an African-American who claimed to be God.-History:...
of Father Divine
Father Divine
Father Divine , also known as Reverend M. J. Divine, was an African American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death. His full self-given name was Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and he was also known as "the Messenger" early in his life...
. In 1934, Lucius Lomax sold the hotel to the Peace Mission. The hotel staff was discharged, and the building was renovated as lodging for the mission's members. The Peace Mission Movement, run by Father Divine, operated a multi-racial religious colony at the Dunbar, with members using the dining room (formerly the site of a cabaret) for Holy Communion ceremonies. The Dunbar was sold to the Neslon family in the late 1930s, and it resumed its role as the cultural center of the Los Angeles black community.
Deterioration and redevelopment
Just as racial segregation had created a need for the Dunbar, racial integration in the 1950s eliminated the need. Duke Ellington, who had previously kept a suite at the Dunbar, began staying at the Chateau Marmont in HollywoodHollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
, and others followed. As one writer put it: “When the barriers against integration began to crumble in the late 1950s, so did the Dunbar Hotel.”
Bernard Johnson bought the Dunbar in 1968, but the hotel continued to lose money, and Johnson closed the hotel's doors in 1974. While closed in 1974, comedian Rudy Ray Moore
Rudy Ray Moore
Rudy Ray Moore was an American comedian, musician, singer, film actor, and film producer. He was perhaps best known as Dolemite , the uniquely articulate pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite, and its sequel, The Human Tornado...
used the hotel extensively in his low budget film Dolemite
Dolemite
Dolemite is a 1975 blaxploitation feature film, and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the film and its soundtrack...
, and in 1976, the movie A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich
A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich
A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich is a 1973 young adult novel by Alice Childress.-Plot:The main character, Benjie Johnson, is a thirteen-year-old heroin addict. The chapters are told in alternating points of view by Benjie and those close to him, including friends, a drug dealer, his mother, his...
was filmed at the Dunbar. Owner Bernard Johnson also opened a museum of black culture for a time. But for most of the years from 1974 to 1987, the building was vacant and declined drastically, as transients began using it for shelter, and the building suffered from graffiti, broken windows and litter.
A renovation effort was started in 1979, but stopped when city funding ceased. By 1987, the Dunbar was marred by graffiti and generally tarnished by neglect. That year, a plan was announced to convert the Dunbar into low-income housing units with a museum of black culture on the ground floor. The 115 hotel rooms on the top three floors were gutted and replaced with 72 apartments. The mezzanine, lobby and basement retained their original décor and were converted into a museum and cultural center. The project was funded in large part with city redevelopment funds at a cost of $4.2 million.
In 1990, the Dunbar re-opened as a 73-unit apartment building for low-income senior citizens and museum of black history. Delegates from the NAACP national convention helped rededicate the Dunbar in July 1990 following its renovation. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley attended the rededication ceremony and praised the efforts to “breathe new life and vigor into this magnificent hotel.”
The Dunbar hosted a jazz show in 1991, attended by noted music journalist Leonard Feather
Leonard Feather
Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.-Biography:...
. Feather wrote that the event was like “a visit to a haunted house.” When one of the musicians played a Duke Ellington theme, Feather said “you could look up at the balcony and see, in your mind's eye, Duke himself at a piano on the mezzanine, working out an arrangement for tomorrow's show.”
By 1997, the neighborhood around the Dunbar was 75% Latino, and by 2006 the neighborhood was predominantly Latino and poor, with most of the nearby storefronts having their signs written in Spanish.
Designation as historic site
In 1974, the Dunbar was designated as a Historic-Cultural Landmark (no. 131) by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission. The plaque called the hotel “an edifice dedicated to the memory and dignity of black achievement.” It was also added to the National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1976.