I was riding through downtown Chicago when I saw The Drake glowing above the trees in that famous pink lettering. I recognized the name before I remembered why. That is what institutional glamour does: it enters your memory without requesting permission, settles into a velvet chair and waits for you to catch up.

The Drake opened in 1920 at the top of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Presidents stayed there. Royalty stayed there. Movie stars stayed there. Katharine Hepburn stayed there, which is probably why my brain briefly delivered Audrey Hepburn, a pearl necklace and half of Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the wrong hotel.

Memory is an unreliable concierge.

Still, there stood The Drake—massive, polished and entirely accustomed to being recognized. Its name remained suspended above Chicago more than a century later, glowing as though history had paid the electric bill in advance.

Then I thought about the Dunbar.

The Hotel Built for the People Other Hotels Applauded but Would Not Admit

The Dunbar Hotel opened in Los Angeles in 1928 as the Hotel Somerville. It was built by John and Vada Somerville, two Black dentists who apparently looked at segregation and decided it required better accommodations.

The hotel was constructed by Black contractors, financed by Black investors and opened in time to host the first NAACP national convention held in the western United States. It offered proper guest rooms, a restaurant, a cocktail lounge, a barbershop and an Art Deco lobby with enough dignity to make discrimination wait outside.

It was not charity. It was not provisional lodging with a nervous bedspread and one exhausted lamp. It was luxury created by people who had been denied access to luxury establishments elsewhere.

The Dunbar eventually became the center of Black Los Angeles nightlife. Duke Ellington stayed there. Billie Holiday stayed there. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker moved through its rooms and gathering spaces. W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Joe Louis and other Black intellectuals, artists, athletes and political figures passed through its doors.

These were not simply guests.

These were the somebodies.

One musician remembered that “people who were somebody stayed at the hotel.” That sentence explains the Dunbar better than any tourism brochure ever could. White America had already decided where prestige lived. The Dunbar became the place where Black people recognized one another before the rest of the country got around to updating its guest list.

The Drake Was an Institution. The Dunbar Was a Solution.

Comparing the two hotels strictly by size would miss the point and repeat the insult.

The Drake had hundreds of rooms, elite financial backing and one of the most valuable locations in Chicago. The Dunbar had 115 rooms and the considerably more difficult assignment of creating first-class hospitality inside a country committed to treating Black travelers as a municipal inconvenience.

The Drake was permitted to represent American elegance.

The Dunbar had to prove that Black elegance existed while housing the very people whose music, performances and ideas were already shaping American culture.

Black entertainers could perform for white audiences in prestigious venues and still be refused a bed in the same establishment. Apparently, talent could enter through the stage door while dignity remained subject to hotel policy.

The Dunbar solved that problem with chandeliers.

It also became something the Drake never needed to become: a cultural headquarters. Musicians gathered there after performances. Writers and organizers exchanged ideas in its lobby. Celebrities mixed with local professionals. Black Los Angeles did not merely sleep at the Dunbar. It planned, celebrated, flirted, negotiated, performed and occasionally behaved with the sort of discretion that keeps historians underemployed.

The place was alive.

One Hotel Still Takes Reservations

The Drake remains a luxury hotel. You can reserve a room, order tea and participate in the ongoing performance of historic American refinement.

The Dunbar stopped operating as a hotel in 1974. After years of decline and abandonment, the building was restored and reopened in 2013 as part of Dunbar Village. Today, the former hotel contains affordable apartments for older adults.

The building survived. Its original purpose did not.

There is something respectable about converting a neglected landmark into housing. People live there. The structure has been preserved. Its history has not been bulldozed into a parking lot and memorialized with a tasteful plaque beside a vending machine.

But the contrast remains.

You can still check into the Drake.

You can only remember checking into the Dunbar.

That is how cultural memory often works in America. White glamour remains available as an experience. Black glamour becomes an exhibit, a redevelopment project or a paragraph beginning with the words “once stood.”

The Drake’s sign continues to announce itself over Chicago.

The Dunbar’s marquee now has to announce an argument.

It says we were not waiting outside every glamorous room. Sometimes we built the room, hired the musicians, poured the drinks and decided who counted as somebody.

THE PROPER POUR: THE SOMEBODY

This requires a drink with structure. Nothing blue, nothing served in a plastic bucket and nothing containing an energy drink developed in a laboratory beside an industrial degreaser.

INGREDIENTS

• 1½ ounces cognac
• ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
• ½ ounce strong black-tea syrup
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• 2 ounces chilled brut Champagne or dry sparkling wine
• One wide orange peel

To make the black-tea syrup, combine equal parts strongly brewed black tea and sugar. Stir until dissolved and let it cool.

Add the cognac, lemon juice, tea syrup and bitters to a shaker with ice. Shake briefly, then strain into a chilled coupe. Top with Champagne. Express the orange peel over the surface and place it along the rim.

The cognac carries history. The black tea brings depth. The Champagne refuses to whisper. The lemon keeps the entire arrangement from becoming sentimental.

And the glass matters.

The Somebody belongs in a proper coupe—the kind of glass that looks as though it has overheard something expensive and has no intention of repeating it. I chose a vintage-style crystal coupe with fluted glass, a long stem and a restrained gold rim. Because if we are going to discuss the Drake and the Dunbar over cognac and Champagne, drinking it from whatever survived the dishwasher seems disrespectful.

THE GLASS: Shop the gold-rimmed vintage coupe on Amazon

The cognac carries history. The black tea brings depth. The Champagne refuses to whisper. The lemon keeps the whole arrangement sharp enough to remember exactly why we poured it.

Side-eye and a cheers to the Drake. It has worn its glamour well.

But raise it to the Dunbar.

Not simply because it survived segregation, but because it refused to let segregation define the standard. The Dunbar built its own rooms, poured its own drinks, welcomed the people shaping American culture and became the address where the somebodies already knew they were somebody.

The Drake had the sign.

The Dunbar had the somebodies.

Now that deserves a Proper Pour for the somebodies.

—-Pepper Saint Clair