Philadelphia Dreaming

Last winter photographer Michael T. Regan walked into a time warp. The Divine Lorraine Hotel—an 1894 apartment house from Philadelphia’s Gilded Age—had been vacant since 2000. “I had no idea what I would find,” Regan says. “You walk into a tunnel-like hallway with a grandiose marble stairwell curving up into total darkness.” Some spaces appeared to have been used re-cently (unmade beds, keys at the front desk, Bibles in the chapel), but most of the Victorian building was in a sad state of disrepair. Regan used natural light, with occasional help from dim chandeliers, to capture the interiors in a range of murky darkness and bright luminosity. “It was a great exercise in photography, letting your eyes and creative instincts wander.”

In 2002 the decaying structure—home to a religious group, Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, since 1948 and Philly’s first integrated hotel—won recognition as a historic landmark, and this year it was sold along with adjoining lots for about $10 million. A proposal by Jason Lempieri to convert the space into a columbarium was a Next Generation Competition finalist. At ten stories with a neon rooftop sign, it’s a towering icon in the North Broad Street area, and its next incarnation could become the neighborhood’s saving grace.