Hotel Olga

History

The Hotel Olga, located at the corner of West 145th Street and Lenox Avenue, in Harlem, was opened in 1920 by African-American businessman Edward “Ed” H. Wilson, who later opened a hotel and reception hall in the neighborhood. The three-story hotel, built in 1898 and formerly occupied by three other hotel businesses, was mentioned in national newspapers and drew an international Black clientele, many of them important entertainers, athletes, writers, publishers, and others, such as baseball star Satchel Paige and jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The hotel was also regularly included in The Negro Motorist’s Green Book, with its first mention in 1938 and its last in 1961 (the Green Book was a national guide, published by Harlem resident Victor Hugo Green from 1937 to 1966, that listed welcoming hotels and other spaces for Black travelers during the Jim Crow era). Harlem historian Eric K. Washington notes, “In an era when Harlem’s now iconic Hotel Theresa still loomed as a citadel of racial exclusion, Wilson conjured up his swank haven for ‘the Race’ from an earlier mixed-race watering hole on the same site, the Dolphin Hotel.”

Given the hotel’s renown and its connection to the arts community through heiress A’Lelia Walker (Wilson’s sister-in-law and hostess of the Dark Tower Tea Room formerly located on the Harlem site now occupied by the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library), many Black LGBT figures undoubtedly came through the Hotel Olga’s doors. Washington notes two documented so far:

Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954), known as the “Dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, became the first African American to be selected as a Rhodes scholar, in 1907. Though largely based in Washington, D.C., as a professor of 41 years at Howard University, Locke often visited Harlem and stayed at the Hotel Olga in at least May 1924.

In 1925, Locke authored the pioneering book The New Negro, which, soon after, became one of the earliest acquisitions of the newly-formed Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints (the precursor to today’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. He was a mentor to many figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including poets Countee Cullen, who credited Locke with helping him embrace his homosexuality, and Langston Hughes.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937), who earned the nickname “Empress of the Blues” as one of the most popular and influential blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, stayed at the Hotel Olga in 1927. In that year, her signature hit songs “After You’ve Gone,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” were released. Smith also performed at the famed Apollo Theater on West 125th Street.

The bisexual singer helped transform American music. Her impact was so profound that she was the only woman to be given a whole chapter in Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It (1955).

The Hotel Olga was demolished in 2019, becoming the third loss of an LGBT historic site featured on this website. Washington and others had attempted to save the storied building for adaptive reuse.

Entry by Amanda Davis, project manager (June 2019; last revised September 2023), and based on research by Eric K. Washington, historian.

NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.