Home Eckers Hotel

Home Eckers Hotel was listed in the Green Book as “Home Eckers Hotel—122 Hargett Street” in Raleigh from 1961-1967. For an earlier iteration of the hotel, see DeLuxe Hotel.¹

Built by Calvin Lightner in 1915, the Lightner Building at 125 E. Hargett Street was a hub for Black life in Raleigh, North Carolina during the Green Book era. Ownership of the building changed hands over the years. The Household of Ruth, the female auxiliary for the Grand Order of Odd Fellows, purchased the building in 1925. Ownership of the building passed to the North Carolina Homemakers Association in the 1940s and the name of the building’s hotel, the Arcade Hotel, was changed to “Home Eckers Hotel.” ²

The hotel became the “Peebles Hotel” just before the Lightner Arcade Building was destroyed by fire in 1970. Today, 122 E. Hargett Street is part of Raleigh’s central bus depot.³

Essay by Brandie K. Ragghianti, 2024

Notes

1. Victor Green, 1961 Green Book, 69; Green, 1962 Green Book, 74; Green, 1963-1964 Green Book, 58; Green, 1966-1967 Green Book, 58. 
2. Hill’s Raleigh City Directories, 1948-1951, alphabetical listing, street listing; Raleigh Boy, “Flashback Friday: Hotel Arcade and Lobby, Raleigh, N.C.,” Goodnight Raleigh (blog), February 17, 2012, http://goodnightraleigh.com/2012/02/hotel-arcade-and-lobby-raleigh-n-c/; Bowers, Katherine, Derek Huss, and Rachel Jacobson, “The Green Book Assignment, North Carolina, Durham, Wake, Halifax, Vance: Historical Structure Report for the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office,” HI 587: Cultural Resource Management, North Carolina State University, Spring 2016, 2;  Teresa Leonard, “Past Times: East Hargett Street was Center of Black Life and Business,” Raleigh News & Observer, February 24, 2016, accessed from https://www.newsobserver.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/past-times/articl…; Jordan Scott and Kelly Agan, “The Green (The Negro Motorist Green book; The Negro Travelers’ Green Book,” NCPedia, https://ncpedia.org/green-book.

3. Bowers, Katherine, Derek Huss, and Rachel Jacobson, “The Green Book Assignment, North Carolina, Durham, Wake, Halifax, Vance: Historical Structure Report for the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office,” HI 587: Cultural Resource Management, North Carolina State University, Spring 2016, 2;  Teresa Leonard, “Past Times: East Hargett Street was Center of Black Life and Business,” Raleigh News & Observer, February 24, 2016, accessed from https://www.newsobserver.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/past-times/articl…; Jordan Scott and Kelly Agan, “The Green (The Negro Motorist Green book; The Negro Travelers’ Green Book,” NCPedia, https://ncpedia.org/green-book.