The Imperial Hotel which stood at the corner of Church and Burnaby Streets for more than a century was demolished yesterday.

Built sometime in the late 1890s, the hotel ? one of the few black establishments on the Island ? played a central role in the movement towards desegregation.

Georgine R. Hill, MBE, whose husband Hilton G. Hill, MBE, was a travel consultant dealing largely with the hotel, had remembered some of the hotel?s glory days.

?It played a good part in Bermuda?s history,? she said yesterday. ?It was a centre for a great deal of activity.?

Many famous black people visited the hotel, she said, some from the islands, but most from the United States.

One, she remembered, was a young actor named James Edwards. Mr. Edwards was starring in a movie called ?Home of the Brave? in 1949, a war movie starring a black protagonist and dealing with racial prejudice.

Because of the subject matter, Bermuda?s theatres would not show the movie, Mrs. Hill remembered. However her husband contacted Mr. Edwards, who came to Bermuda of his own volition ? bringing with him his own copy of ?Home of the Brave?.

The movie was shown at the Imperial Hotel, and Mr. Edwards travelled throughout Bermuda talking to Bermudians. ?That was a breakthrough,? Mrs. Hill said.

The Leopards Club also met at the hotel for their famous luncheons, which they broadcast over the radio.

At one time, Mrs. Hill remembered, black Bermudians were boycotting the Bermudiana Theatre, which did not allow black people on the basis of being a private club for ?those of unmixed European descent?.

A Harvard anthropologist visiting the Island had been invited to speak at a Leopard?s Club luncheon at the time, and he explained over the radio the science behind the races ? and that there was no such thing as an ?unmixed? race.

?That was another shot in the right direction,? Mrs. Hill said.

The hotel, she added, was ?a place of great social and political activity. Being right in the centre of town, it was a great meeting place.

?I remember it with great fondness and respect, and am sad about its demise.?

Jardine Gibbons Properties will build a five-storey office block in the hotel?s place, to be used by the Gibbons Group of Companies as well as, reportedly, a local law firm.

Pending planning approval the development should start early next year and take around 15 months to complete.