Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hotel de gink n.

[SE hotel + gink n.1 ; the orig. Hotel de Gink was founded in Seattle in 1913 and flourished until 1915, a chain of similarly named hotels were then founded across the US; used in WWII by US Air Transport Command for its hotels]

(US, orig. tramps) a lodging house; subseq. used for transient officers’ quarters in US forces.

Show quotations
[US]Dome (U. of Notre Dame Yearbook) n.p.: Talk about the poor suffering Belgians — you should have slanted the Hotel-de-Gink whereat we registered. The place had been used successively as a morgue, an ice house and a harness shop. Of late, it was chiefly a home for indigent parasites.
[US]Day Book (Chicago) 24 July 13/1: The Hotel de Gink [...] consecrated to the comfort of all hoboes.
National Conference of Social Work (U.S.) Conference Bulletin XXXII:3 May 15: Last winter Spokane had no organization of unemployed and no ‘Hotel de Gink’, as did Seattle and Tacoma.
[US]‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 208: Hotel de Gink – A charitable or a municipal lodging house.
F. & W. Oursler Father Flanagan of Boys Town 93: The next day the men met Father Flanagan at the ‘Hotel de Gink,’ as he already called it.
E. Dionne Reminiscing 55: An eye sore of filth and vermine, the Hotel De Gink ranked second to none.
[SA]L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 107: an ‘Hotel de Gink’ is any charitable lodging-house.
(ref. to 1943) www.skylighters.org 🌐 (225th AAA Searchlight Battalion) [picture caption] Marine pilots of VC-26 using the ‘officers’’ shower, made of an improvised B-24 gas tank built near the ‘Hotel De Gink,’ Bloody Hill, Guadalcanal, May 23, 1943.
(ref. to 1913) www.historylink.org 🌐 Homelessness was both a local and a national problem prior to America’s entry into World War I. Unemployed and homeless men, known variously as hoboes and ‘ginks,’ responded to their condition by organizing work gangs, small businesses, and self-managed hostels in major cities. Seattle’s first such ‘Hotel de Gink’ was established by Jeff Davis in 1913 at 4th Avenue and Madison Street, then the site of Providence Hospital (now the Federal Courthouse).