Philadelphia’s Broad Street is the longest straight city street in the world, reaching from the Navy Yard on the south to the City limits on the north. It was and remains one of the City’s major thoroughfares. It’s only logical that one of the most luxurious and best preserved late 19th-century apartment houses in Philadelphia, the Divine Lorraine Hotel, inhabits the street.
The Divine Lorraine, located at 699 N. Broad Street, was designed and constructed as an apartment house between 1892 and 1893 by architect Willis G. Hale. In 1900 the building became the Lorraine Hotel when the Metropolitan Hotel Company purchased the apartments. Father Divine, leader and head of the Divine Peace Mission Movement, acquired the building in 1948 from the Metropolitan Hotel Company and renamed it the Divine Lorraine Hotel.
Over the subsequent fifty years, the Divine Lorraine Hotel served as the center of the Peace Mission’s international religious, civil rights and social welfare activities. Following Father Divine’s death in 1965, the Peace Mission continued to own and operate the Divine Lorraine Hotel until 1999, when it was sold.
Now – with preliminary approval from City Council – EB Realty Management Corp., the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, are moving forward with plans to renovate space adjacent to the Divine Lorraine Hotel. The plans include two apartment towers and a supermarket. Specifically, 480 apartments with 580 parking spaces shared between the residents and the supermarket customers.
“It’s a 750,000-square-foot project that is going to be on North Broad, on four acres that are behind the Divine Lorraine,” Matt McClure, attorney for the developer, RAL Companies, told KYW 1060 reporter Mike Dunn. “This is one of the largest development sites close to center city Philadelphia. The project is going to involve an 83,000-square-foot supermarket, which is going to be one of the largest supermarkets in the Philadelphia area.”
City Council president Darrell Clarke, whose district includes the site, is thrilled about the project.
“This is a project that will stimulate the development of the Divine Lorraine Hotel, which is adjacent to that. And I think that this particular section of town is on the cusp of some significant development opportunities. This is really going to take North Broad to another level,” Clarke told Dunn.
The Divine Lorraine was shuttered more than a decade ago, and efforts to revive the site so far have failed.
