37 Years Ago: Second Fire in Six Months Breaks Out in Barclay Hotel
Los Angeles Examiner / Public Domain
[digitallibrary.usc.edu]
Firefighters tear apart a smoldering mattress inside the Barclay Hotel while fighting a fire on March 15, 1972. A second blaze broke out in September.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Around 2am on August 21, 1972, guest Harry Roche smelled smoke from his bed in room 532 of the Barclay Hotel at 4th and Main. Finding his room phone dead, he ran downstairs to alert the hotel manager.
No one was killed or seriously injured in the blaze that night, but just over five months earlier a similar fire had left three guests dead and seven others injured.
Blame for that March 15 blaze was placed on a guest who was smoking in bed on the hotel's sixth floor. Two women and a man were burned to death on that floor.
The September fire broke out on the same floor -- something a little odd given that the hotel had not even returned the rooms to use. Guests were evacuated from the 4th and 5th floors of the hotel and waited in the lobby while fire crews fought the flames above.
Fire again broke out at the hotel on September 11, 1974. This time, though, a new fire-alarm system and fire-resistant doors. The devices had been installed the year previous in response to new city rules that required residential buildings be brought up to current fire codes.
A curious side-note to the March 15 blaze: While fire crews were still at work, Harvey Lynn Beagle II, a resident of the Cecil Hotel, approached a police officer and claimed to have set the fire. He pulled out a newspaper clipping from his wallet that showed him to be a convicted arsonist. Police took Beagle into custody, but released him a few days later when it became clear he could not have been responsible.
vokoban on August 21, 2010, at 12:32PM – #1
The Hotel Van Nuys which changed it's name to the Hotel Barclay in 1929 has a crazy history of suicides, fires, murders, glamour and elegance. Maybe not as much as the Westminster that was across the street but at least the Barclay is still standing. Here's another fire from 1981:
(March 2, 1981 LA Times) 40 FLEE IN FIRE DOWNTOWN More than 40 occupants were evacuated from the Barclay Hotel at 103 W. 4th St. early this morning when fire broke out in a room on the fifth floor. Damage, which was confined to the room, was estimated at $30,000. There were no reports of injuries. The cause of the blaze was under investigation.
Guest on November 19, 2010, at 01:35AM – #2
Yes, I know of one particular murder (which I saw in a book)that took place at this hotel in November 1944. It was a "Ripper" style murder in which a guy picked up a woman at a bar, brought her here, beat, strangled and stabbed her to death. He then mutilated her corpse and left her there for the employees to discover. Truly gruesome. This place must be haunted.
Jesus Suarez on November 21, 2010, at 09:32PM – #3
I remember being a Runaway and staying at the Barclay when I was 16 years old in 1981. I didn't have much money and at the time it was one of the cheapest places that you could stay in L.A. I had a room that I KNEW was Haunted because the first three nights that I stayed there I had cockroaches raining on me from the ceiling on to my bed. I got so tired of killing them that eventually I only bothered to kill those that would land on me or crawl on me. After about the third day of me being there they all just disappeared, But a cold spot that would sweat would move from wall to wall if I would rest my hand on it or it would cause the room to get so cold that I was able to see steam coming out of my nose or mouth when ever I would breathe. I knew that they were Ghosts but they didn't bother me at all because I was raised not to be afraid of spirits. My religion is Santeria. You can see through spirits so you always know what they're about...the Living on the other hand those you had to be wary of because you can never really know just what hell they could be hiding. I stayed there a total of 3 weeks until I was able to find a better room at the St. Francis Hotel in Hollywood. I knew that the Barclay was Haunted and to see these articles and postings just finally confirmed what I had always suspected. I'm so glad that somebody finally posted this and I hope to read more stories on the Gruesome history of this Hotel as I would like to make more sense of my experience there when life had me seek shelter at the Barclay Hotel.