Qualla: The Streamline Hotel

The Streamline Hotel: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keiteay, CC BY 4.0. On the evening of December 14, 1947, a group of drivers, mechanics, and promoters crowded into the Ebony Club, the rooftop bar of a four-story mint-green hotel on South Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach. They were angry. Promoters had been skipping town with gate receipts before races ended. Rules changed from track to track. Drivers risked their necks for purses that might never materialize. Bill France Sr., the Washington D.C. transplant who had been promoting beach-and-road races for a decade, had called them together with a proposition: organize or die. Sixty-nine days later, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was born. The building where it happened -- the Streamline Hotel -- still stands, its story as turbulent as the sport it launched.

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Image: Keiteay | CC BY 4.0

The Streamline Hotel: Curves of a Machine Age

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Streamline Hotel opened in 1940, its rounded corners and horizontal lines a textbook example of Streamline Moderne architecture -- the style that made buildings look like they were moving at speed even while standing still. The four-story structure sits on the west side of St...

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Image: Elisa.rolle | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Streamline Hotel: The Rooftop Where Racing Found Its Rules

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dough4872, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bill France Sr. had moved to Daytona Beach from Washington D.C. in 1935, drawn by the weather and the racing culture that had grown around the city's uniquely hard-packed sand. By 1947, he understood that stock car racing would destroy itself without structure. The December meeti...

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Image: Dough4872 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Streamline Hotel: A Den of Iniquity and Other Chapters

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dough4872, CC BY-SA 3.0. Glory did not protect the Streamline from neglect. Through the decades, the hotel accumulated rust-stained walls and sun damage. A local police chief called the building a "den of iniquity." It cycled through incarnations that no one could have predicted: a youth hostel, a retire...

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Image: Dough4872 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Streamline Hotel: Resurrection on Reality Television

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dough4872, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Streamline's salvation came from Eddie Hennessy, a local businessman who purchased the building in 2014 with plans to transform it into a South Beach-style boutique hotel. The renovation made national television when the property was featured on an episode of Hotel Impossible...

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Image: Dough4872 | CC BY-SA 3.0