On "The Fireproof Hotel"

Stay as long as you'd like

It had to be at least 10 years ago, because I moved out west in 2014 and I no longer own a car back east, so I’ve had no good reason to sit in that particularly mind numbing New York traffic since.

I don’t remember why, but I was on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway when I saw it out of the corner of my eye, in large, bold but faded lettering:

FIREPROOF HOTEL

I’d seen “Indoor pool” or “Free Breakfast” and of course “HBO in all rooms”, but the notion that you’d need to advertise that your building won’t burst into flames is a highly specific marketing choice. Most of my hotel stays are for less than 24 hours, and if I’m checking off boxes of criteria, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought about fire safety even once.

Do entire hotels really catch fire that often?

Apparently, they once did. If you google “fireproof hotel”, what you’ll find is a list of hotels that definitely were not, even if advertised as such. Early hotels were built of wood, and in the days before electricity, candles and lanterns were the only sources of light, so they were basically destined to become heaps of ash.

The 1900s brought steel and concrete constructions, which inspired the marketing of the “fireproof hotel”. However, plastering that phrase on the side of the building was apparently not enough to stop the flames, as the 40s saw two of the deadliest hotel fires in history, one of which was the Winecoff fire in Atlanta, which claimed the lives of 119 people, many of whom tragically jumped to their death. A Georgia Tech student caught a photo of one woman as she leapt from the burning hotel, and he won a Pulitzer for that photograph in 1947.

While all that information satiated my curiosity, I still couldn’t move on. The phrase stayed with me.

I identified with the fireproof hotel. A temporary, womb-like place that guaranteed safety. I felt like I lived there. Like I built that place with my own two hands.

If my life now was a fireproof hotel, my younger years were an unlocked door. I was free of attachments; willing to bruise as I was assured most shit would bounce off me anyway. But I got knocked down a few times. I was forced to start over more than I’d like to admit. And it was in that rebuilding phase that I subconsciously sought a way to protect my spirit.

So, I stayed inside. I didn’t share myself. It was temporary, I’d say, though the years passed. I’d tell myself that this isn’t my forever home, just a place I’ve checked into while figuring it all out. A safe place. A shielded bunker. A fireproof hotel.

The phrase sat with me for 10+ years. It almost became an album title, then a song…I’m sure other things I forgot along the way. And then it revisited me when I started coming up with the idea to build a place to share my words.

I knew I loved the phonetics of it, but I didn’t know that it fit. After all, the phrase resonated because it seemed to perfectly describe this absolutely depressing way of life I so willfully slipped into.

But then I thought, what if The FireProof Hotel isn’t where I live or stay, but rather a place I oversee. Somewhere people visit, where they can take in the architecture and maybe spot the details in the wallpaper. A place where I care very deeply for the space itself, and tend to the upkeep with great regard for the guests who come and go. I like that. That feels right. That feels like a place I’d like to be.

Welcome to The Fireproof Hotel.