Morrison Hotel featured on The Doors album burns in LA

The former Morrison Hotel, made famous by The Doors and their 1970 album of the same name, has been significantly damaged by a fire that erupted in downtown Los Angeles.

The four-storey building, which has been vacant more than a decade, burned for nearly two hours before more than 100 firefighters brought the flames under control, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The Morrison Hotel was featured on the cover of The Doors' fifth album. Celebrated music photographer Henry Diltz captured the image in 1969 and said years later that it took a little trickery to pull it off.

A hotel clerk told the band they weren't allowed to take photos inside, but when the clerk stepped away, the group ran into the lobby and Diltz quickly got the photo looking through the window, with legendary frontman Jim Morrison in the middle.

"It was a great old wooden building with many small rooms upstairs where transients and drinkers could sleep it off on a cot for $US2.50 a night!" Diltz told The Associated Press. "I think the beautiful front window with Morrison Hotel in red letters was the best part of it! So did The Doors!"

The album was viewed as a comeback to their roots for The Doors, coming on the heels of Morrison's on-stage arrest at a Miami concert that saw him convicted of indecent exposure and profanity.

Morrison and The Doors would release one final album, L.A. Woman, before he was found dead in a Paris bathtub on July 3, 1971.

Los Angeles firefighters who first arrived at the blaze on Thursday found heavy flames on the building's top floor.

Several people who were in the building escaped without injuries, including three people rescued by firefighters from the third floor, according to the department. The building's roof collapsed, leaving its structural integrity in doubt, the department said.

The building in recent years had been used as a training site for firefighters.