Walk down Central Avenue today and you’ll see a handsome brick building that looks, at first glance, like just another piece of Los Angeles history. It isn't. Not even close. For a solid thirty years, the Dunbar Hotel Los Angeles was the undisputed gravitational center of Black culture in the West. It was the only place where you could find Duke Ellington throwing a "chicks and champagne" party in one suite while Thurgood Marshall was downstairs planning the future of American civil rights.
It was luxury. It was a fortress. Honestly, it was a miracle.
The Hotel That Racism Built
Back in the 1920s, Los Angeles was a weird, segregated mess. If you were Black and professional, like Dr. John Somerville, you couldn't just book a room at the Biltmore. After getting snubbed by a hotel in San Francisco because of his skin color, Somerville decided he’d had enough. He and his wife, Vada—who, by the way, was the first Black woman licensed to practice dentistry in California—built their own.
They didn't cut corners. They hired only Black contractors and laborers. They spent $250,000, which was an insane amount of money in 1928. When the doors opened as the Hotel Somerville, it was the crown jewel of the neighborhood.
Five thousand people showed up for the grand opening.
Imagine that. Thousands of people in their Sunday best, standing on Central Avenue, just to see a lobby with a Spanish arcade, Art Deco chandeliers, and tiled walls that looked like a palace. It wasn't just a building; it was proof of what the community could do when the rest of the city told them "no."
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Why Everyone Started Calling it the Dunbar
The "Somerville" name didn't last long. The stock market crash of 1929 hit everyone, and the Somervilles were forced to sell. For a minute, the community was devastated. They thought they'd lost their symbol. But then a guy named Lucius Lomax bought it and renamed it the Dunbar Hotel Los Angeles in honor of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
He did something even better: he added a nightclub.
That was the spark. Because the major Hollywood hotels wouldn't let Black performers sleep in the rooms where they performed, everyone ended up at the Dunbar. It became a revolving door of legends. You’d have Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong hanging out in the lobby. Ray Charles lived there for a while when he first got to town.
Musicians from the nearby Club Alabam—guys like Charles Mingus and Art Pepper—would run over to the Dunbar between sets just to see who was around. It was the "hip" spot. The energy must have been electric.
A Guest List Like No Other
- Duke Ellington: He basically lived in a suite there whenever he was in LA.
- W.E.B. Du Bois: He called it "a beautiful inn with a soul."
- Joe Louis: The champ was a regular.
- Eddie "Rochester" Anderson: He used the hotel as his headquarters while "campaigning" to be the honorary Mayor of Central Avenue.
The Slow Fade and the Dolemite Era
By the 1950s, things changed. It's a bit of a bitter irony, really. When integration finally started happening, the wealthy and famous Black residents who had been forced to stay at the Dunbar could suddenly go anywhere. Duke Ellington started staying at the Chateau Marmont. The "Black Wall Street" of Central Avenue began to disperse.
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The hotel started to crumble.
By the 1970s, it was a low-rent apartment building. It was so run-down that Rudy Ray Moore used it as a primary filming location for the blaxploitation classic Dolemite. If you watch that movie, you’re seeing the Dunbar in its roughest years—peeling paint, broken windows, a ghost of its former self.
What's Happening With the Dunbar Now?
You can't book a room at the Dunbar Hotel Los Angeles anymore. Not for a night, anyway. In the early 2010s, a massive $12 million renovation project by Thomas Safran & Associates turned the building into affordable housing for seniors.
It was a total gut job, but the good kind. They removed the asbestos. They fixed the structural issues. Most importantly, they reopened that famous central atrium. They put a glass roof over it so the light pours in, hitting the replicated tiles and the fountain just like it did in 1928.
It's now the centerpiece of "Dunbar Village." It connects the hotel with the nearby Somerville Apartments, creating a space for both seniors and families. It’s quiet now, sure. You won't hear Cab Calloway blasting a trumpet at 2:00 AM, but the murals in the lobby have been restored, and the "soul" Du Bois talked about is still there.
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How to Experience the History
If you're heading down to South LA to see it, here is how you should actually do it. Don't just drive by.
- Check the Central Avenue Jazz Festival schedule. Every year, the street comes alive again with music right in front of the hotel. It's the closest you'll get to the 1940s vibe.
- Look for the sidewalk plaques. There’s a "Walk of Fame" style trail that tells the story of the luminaries who walked these specific blocks.
- Visit the Second Baptist Church nearby. This is where the NAACP held the 1928 convention that the hotel was originally built to host.
- Grab food at "Delicious at the Dunbar." There is a restaurant space on-site that tries to keep the tradition of community gathering alive.
The Dunbar isn't a museum where things are kept under glass. It’s a living building. It survived the Depression, it survived the riots, and it survived decades of neglect. It stands there as a reminder that even when a city tries to wall you off, you can build something so beautiful that the whole world eventually has to come to your door to see it.
Take a walk through the neighborhood. Read the historical markers. Imagine the sound of a jukebox playing Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing" while the man himself is sitting three tables away eating breakfast. That's the real Los Angeles.
Next Steps: To truly understand the era, look up the "Central Avenue Jazz" archives at the UCLA Library or visit the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Exposition Park, which frequently features exhibits on the Somerville and Dunbar era.