Save PA Historic Site: The Hotel Brotherhood USA

Greetings! My name is CW (clara). I am fundraising for the Hotel Brotherhood USA, and I am its historian. If you ever worked in a hotel or a restaurant and got employee benefits, you got them because you stood on the shoulders of those who went before you. You reaped from their sacrifice. Hotel and restaurant workers' early history has been traced, leading to a direct connection to The Hotel Brotherhood USA (HB-USA). This pre-labor union organization advocated for health and death benefits for hotel and restaurant workers. How else do you think you got those health benefits?

Just after the Civil War, owners and employers of lavish downtown hotels in Philadelphia, PA, were unwilling to provide health benefits or insurance equally or eagerly to Head-waiters, Waite staff, and Bellhops. This policy was symptomatic across the country. These early 20th-century hotel moguls supported inequality and discrimination in the workplace but eventually provided some benefits to caucasian staff but not to their colored counterparts.

The Hotel Brotherhood USA took its first stand in Philadelphia after six men organized a national day of protest. And after several years, the organization got equal benefits in some cities and states throughout the country. The Hotel Brotherhood has been at its headquarters site on 1523-29 Bainbridge St. Philadelphia, PA, since 1906. The organization voted to renovate extensively after the fire of 1924 and again in 2008, after a collapse caused by the construction of adjacent townhomes. HB-USA has been recognized as an institution and a historic site contributing to Pennsylvania and Philadelphia history. It was the first voice of hotel and restaurant workers in our nation's past to stand and confront inequities and racism in the workplace.

Hotel and restaurant industry training and community outreach have been its strengths, and its ongoing mission is to rebuild and expand in the future. Your donated funds are needed and will be used to preserve its history and restore the Hotel Brotherhood headquarters to its original function. Bathrooms will be refurbished. Carpets and upholstery will be updated, and two point-of-sale stations will be installed. The digital audio/visual system will have state-of-the-art features to accommodate conferences and meetings. Don't let your connection to your hotel and restaurant industry history fade and die; don't let a designated Pennsylvania cultural and historic Blue-Marker site be lost. It would be a travesty because its contribution can't be replaced, and it still has too many people and future generations to develop on its path.