Hotel del Coronado

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Hotel del Coronado

The Hotel del Coronado is a luxury hotel in the City of Coronado, just across the San Diego Bay from San Diego, California. It is one of the few surviving examples of an American architectural genre: the wooden Victorian beach resort. The hotel is located immediately behind the beach, facing the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest beach resort on the North American Pacific Coast.

On December 19, 1885, Elisha S. Babcock, retired railroad executive from Evansville, Indiana; Hampton L. Story, of the Story and Clark Piano Company of Chicago; and Jacob Gruendike, president of the First National Bank of San Diego, bought all of Coronado and North Island for $110,000.

Main building of the Hotel del Coronado

A 24-page prospectus titled "Coronado Beach. San Diego, California" asserted that "The Coronado Beach Company has been organized with a capital of One Million Dollars . . . ." The officers were Babcock, president, Story, vice-president and Gruendike, secretary-treasurer. Also involved with the company by now were three men from Indiana: railroad baron Josephus Collett of Terre Haute; lumber merchant Heber Ingle of Patoka and John Inglehart, a miller, who later became famous through the development of Swansdown flour.

Lobby of the Hotel del Coronado

The men hired architect James Reid, a native of New Brunswick, Canada, who had practiced in Evansville and Terre Haute. Younger brother Merritt Reid, a partner in Reid Brothers, the Evansville firm, stayed in Indiana but brother Watson Reid helped supervise the 2,000 laborers. Construction of the hotel began in March 1887 and was finished just 11 months later in February 1888 at the cost of one million dollars. Labor was provided largely by Chinese immigrants from San Francisco and Oakland. The hotel was built as a premier resort for the wealthy. It is one of the oldest and largest all-wooden buildings in California and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

The hotel has hosted a variety of notable guests including Thomas Edison, L. Frank Baum, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh. Edward VIII was a guest of the hotel in 1920. At the time his future wife Wallis Simpson was a Coronado resident. They may have met each other at the hotel.

The following presidents have stayed at the hotel: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.[1]

Front of the Hotel del Coronado

Dragon Tree of the Hotel del Coronado

Old building of the Hotel del Coronado

Another famous resident of the hotel is the purported ghost of Kate Morgan. In 1892, she checked into room 3312 (renumbered to 3327), to meet with her estranged husband Tom, but he never arrived. She was found dead on the beach four days later. While initially declared a suicide, forensic evidence processed over a century later revealed she was shot.

The hotel has appeared in several films, including Some Like it Hot, The Stunt Man, and My Blue Heaven. It was also the setting for the 1975 novel Bid Time Return (aka Somewhere in Time) by Richard Matheson.

The unqiue design of the Hotel served as the basis for Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

[edit] Ownership

In 1963, Larry Lawrence and fellow investors bought Hotel del Coronado from the Alessio family of San Diego. He initially planned to develop the land around the hotel and ultimately demolish it, but changed his mind and refurbished the hotel in period style and nearly doubled its capacity to 700 rooms. Shortly after his death in 1996, the family sold the property to Hotel del Coronado L.P., an affiliate of Travelers Group. [2]

In 2003, the hotel was sold by a partnership consisting of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement Service and Lowe Enterprises to another partnership consisting of KSL Resorts, Inc and CNL Hotels & Resorts. CNL and KSL completed a $10M renovation of the hotels guestrooms and announced the development of "North Beach" which would include several dozen luxury villas on the northern edge of the hotel's property. The North Beach villas would serve as both residences to their owners and hotel suites when not occupied. In late 2005, CNL announced it would sell its interest in the partnership. Strategic Hotels & Resorts, a publicly traded hotel REIT based in Chicago, IL is expected to take a 45% nonconsoliated interest in the storied landmark along with current owners KKR and KSL.