Winecoff Hotel - postcards and fire photos

Seen here are a couple of postcards of the former Winecoff Hotel and two photographs taken on 12/07/46, the night a horrible fire ravaged the building and resulted in the loss of 119 lives, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history. Following the fire, the hotel closed but it was re-opened in 1951 as the Peachtree On Peachtree Hotel. By 1967 swanky (and new) downtown hotels like the Hyatt Regency were shaking up the marketplace and the Peachtree On Peachtree found itself facing a dismal financial future. The hotel was then donated to the Georgia Baptist Convention, who used it as housing for the elderly. After several years of vacancy, it re-opened as the Ellis Hotel in October of 2007.

Georgia Tech grad student Arnold Hardy (1922 - 2007) became the first amateur photographer to win a Pulitzer Prize as the result of a dramatic photo he took of a woman plunging toward the ground after jumping from an 11th floor window toward fire rescue workers below. The woman, Daisy McCumber, broke her back and pelvis as well as both legs, but somehow managed to survive the ordeal and live for another 46 years. To see the photo and read a short article about Hardy go here.

For a much more in-depth history of the fire and its aftermath, track down the 1993 book The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story Of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire by Sam Heys and Allen B. Goodwin. Goodwin also occasionally updates a blog about the fire with new photos and other recently uncovered information.