- Winecoff Hotel
The Winecoff Hotel is a former
hotel located at 176Peachtree Street NW, indowntown Atlanta , Georgia, USA. Designed byWilliam Lee Stoddart , the 15-story building opened in 1913. [ [http://www.winecoffhotelfire.com/winecoffdoc2.html Peachtree Burning] ] It is located next to the formerMacy's (at 180 Peachtree Street), which was built as theflagship Davison's , and just south from theWestin Peachtree Plaza Hotel (easily identifiable by its cylindrical glass design).Fire
The Winecoff is best known for a
fire that occurred there onDecember 7 ,1946 , in which 119 people died. It remains the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history, and prompted many changes inbuilding code s. Guests at the hotel that night included teenagers attending a Tri-Y Youth Conference, Christmas shoppers, and people in town to seeSong of the South .Arnold Hardy , a 26-year-oldgraduate student at Georgia Tech, became the firstamateur to win aPulitzer Prize inphotography 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. [ [http://www.gtalumni.org/news/ttopics/win93/pulitzer.html "Pulitzer Photo" by Sam Heys] ]Reopenings
In April 1951, the hotel reopened as the Peachtree Hotel on Peachtree, and was now equipped with both
fire alarm s andfire escape s. In 1967, it was donated to the Georgia Baptist Convention forhousing theelderly , and then repeatedly sold to a series of potential developers.After over two decades of vacancy, ground broke on a $23 million
renovation project in April 2006. The project restored the building into aboutique luxury hotel, called the Ellis Hotel after thestreet that runs along the north side of the building. It was reopened onOctober 1 ,2007 .References
External links
* [http://www.winecoffhotelfire.com Winecoff Hotel Fire Documentary official website]
* [http://www.ellishotel.com Ellis Hotel official website]
* [http://www.winecoff.org/hotel Website for the book "The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire" ]
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~gafulton/winecoffhotel.html RootsWeb.com site on the Winecoff fire]
*Maps for this location: coord|33|45|30|N|84|23|16|W
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