Douglass Hotel / Showboat + PHMC marker

Here, at 1409 Lombard, is the emotional center of the whole tour — and this time there really is a marker. A Pennsylvania state historical marker stands on the sidewalk, and it remembers Billie Holiday as a singer who often lived in this city. This was the Douglass Hotel, built around 1926 and listed in the Green Book — the guide that told Black travelers which hotels would take them — from 1938 on. When New York's clubs were closed to her, the Douglass was home.

And down a flight of stairs, in the basement beneath your feet, was the Showboat: one of the great jazz rooms of mid-century Philadelphia. Remember that 1956 arrest, one block north? After she made bail, this is where she came — down into the Showboat to finish the week she'd been booked to play. The police upstairs, the stage downstairs, and Lady Day walking back to the microphone.

Now stand still for the detail that gives me chills. This one basement holds two different eras of jazz history. In 1963, John Coltrane recorded a live album in that same room — “Live at the Showboat.” In 1977, Grover Washington Junior cut “Live at the Bijou” in the same space. The room where the state says Billie often lived is stacked, floor by floor and year by year, with the music of a whole city.

If you want to hear the Philadelphia she was known for, the song link on your screen is “Lover Man” — one of the numbers audiences came to this neighborhood to hear her sing. Take a moment with the marker; it's rare, on this tour, to find her name actually written down.

When you're ready, we head for the corner that anchored the jazz strip. Go south to South Street and walk east to the corner of Broad and South. Her bronze plaque is set into the Broad Street sidewalk there.