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The Dominoes After-Midnight Club |
The DAMC Explores Another Historical Landmark
The Tivoli Hotel 1997-2006
This Historic Building was demolished in May, 2006. The Tivoli Hotel was a very special place to us. The DAMC's Tivoli page updates in 2007 with the most current events & visuals, offering a fitting tribute to our lost treasure.
The old Tivoli Hotel on Biloxi's Beachfront, completed in 1927 and abandoned since the late 1980's, has been the most challenging of all our research targets. As a certified historical site left to decompose and deteriorate, it became a natural choice for the D.A.M.C. explorers. An opportunity presented itself in 1997 while the Biloxi Hospital reconstruction neared completion and the White House Hotel was posted off-limits and secured, itself awaiting imminent renovation.
The Tivoli Hotel kicked ass in many ways. Just as beautiful as her older cousin (The White House), she was denied the bright future that the renovation of the latter promised. Left to rot, the Tivoli has alternately been left wide open or closely guarded and posted. Our lurks of the Tivoli ceased briefly in 1998 when the building was fully sealed and it appeared that renovation might actually be under way. This was not to be the case. Outdated of current building codes by decades and full of asbestos, the costs of renovation would be prohibitively high above the $7 million asking price for the property - an impractical investment for either speculators or the State (who once considered it). While we kept an eye on the status of this building, little could be learned about its future. The few who would talk about it had little to say.
In 2000, fortune smiled when an opened window gave us a chance to complete the work that we thought we would never finish: explore and document the entire building. Cameras and motion detectors had been installed but there was still no evidence that renovation of this landmark was forthcoming. The decay and debris described in our original Virtual Tour in 1997 had only grown worse.
Lurks in the Tivoli began again in February 2000 & continued as the Club got to make several successful "anniversary special" lurks with brand new DAMC members that Summer, and we held our annual fourth of July party on the roof in 2001 and 2002. An unchained door in the back of the building allowed us one more season of Lurking in the Summer of 2004. We Love the Tivoli Hotel.
The Final Chapter of the Tivoli Hotel,
May 2006-
Instead of salvage, the Tivoli meets demolition.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina thrashed the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Winds and a 20+ foot storm wave virtually destroyed most of Biloxi, and the solid Tivoli building was not immune to this force of nature. The brickwork of the expansive first floor halls dissolved into chunks. Worse happened, however, as a beachfront casino barge a quarter-mile away broke from its moorings and sailed westward over the highway before crashing into the Tivoli, destroying a large part of the hotel before coming to rest directly west of it. By Christmas, the barge was finally dismantled & removed, leaving the Tivoli property fenced and in limbo until final, decisive action was rendered in May 2006.
View below looks west from the ballroom & through the main reception area in the front, looking towards the bar & club - two weeks after Katrina hit.
Recovery and 'Progress' after the Nation's worst storm ever came at a cost. During a weekend in May 2006, while citizens & media watched the city of Biloxi dynamite the remains of the Grand Casino's tall beachfront hotel nearby, a much less-publicized event was unfolding - a demolition crew began to slam a wrecking ball into the historic Tivoli Hotel. The swimming pool was filled in, the ground leveled, within one week all which remained was the mountain of yellow bricks and debris to truck away. The Dominoes After-Midnight Club and all its research/archival efforts since 1997 figure prominently above others involved with this building during the final ten years of its exsistence - - We are indeed the keepers of the Tivoli's Legacy.
The Links Below get you started in one of the most popular areas of the DAMC website. Choose what you want to check out- Go to the original Tivoli Hotel Lurk website (One of our original web pages, it is over ten years old. We've always liked it and haven't ever been inclined to update it.)
If you want to skip it and see more recent stuff, go to the ALL NEW lurks section. This starts with the new 2004 Lurks, and has some of our previous July 4th celebrations held at the Tivoli before Katrina.
RETURN SOON for the UPDATED TIVOLI HOTEL website of the
DOMINOES AFTER-MIDNIGHT CLUB!
Visit the ORIGINAL (1997) Tivoli Hotel Lurk virtual tour!
ALL NEW lurks in the TIVOLI HOTEL, Summer 2004
Plus 2000-2002 Lurks!
LATEST local News about the Tivoli- Sun-Herald (Biloxi MS), 20 August, 2007
In June 2006, the Tivoli Hotel is nothing but a mountain of hazardous, shameful debris. In less than a few weeks, the remains will have been removed, and the historic building only a bittersweet memory. Noteworthy was the lack of media coverage (purposely??)of the demolition. Similiarly, 15 years earlier the abandoned shell of the landmark Buena Vista Hotel (holding up ambitions of Casino and property developers) 'mysteriously' caught fire by 'unknown causes' - that site was a casino parking lot in less than a year.
A cavernous, ghostly chamber swallows us after we lurk the maze of rooms in the back of the building one year before Hurricane Katrina and the wrecking ball would destroy it forever. Guests would enter this reception hall from the front doors of the hotel. To the left was passage to the bar and club. To the right, the reception desk. Straight ahead, the elevator, the grand stairway to the second floor and the passways to the various shops and service areas located on this floor. Below is a view down one of these passways in the 1980s, while the hotel was still open.
www.biloxihistory.org - The Dominoes After-Midnight Club!
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