Hotel del Coronado

Across the bay from San Diego, on Coronado island, Hotel del Coronado has been a Victorian beach resort since 1888, and it is one of the largest wooden buildings of its period still standing in the United States. Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story built it in eleven months; it was among the first hotels in the world lit by electricity, and it reached a wider public in 1959 as the Florida hotel of Some Like It Hot. It is now part of Hilton's Curio Collection.

History

Babcock, a retired railway executive from Indiana, and Story, a piano manufacturer from Chicago, bought the undeveloped Coronado peninsula in 1885 and planned a resort that would be the talk of the western world. They hired the Reid brothers, architects from Indiana, and built the hotel in under a year with labour brought from San Francisco, opening in February 1888. The electrical plant was supervised by Thomas Edison's company, and the hotel's lighting was among the first in any hotel. The venture nearly failed in the 1890s; the sugar magnate John D. Spreckels took control and his family owned it until 1948.

The guest list followed. Edward, Prince of Wales, was entertained here in 1920, in the city where Wallis Simpson, whom he later married, was then living. L. Frank Baum wintered at the hotel for several years in the 1900s, worked on his Oz books there and designed the crown-shaped chandeliers of the Crown Room. In 1958 Billy Wilder filmed Some Like It Hot on the beach and the hotel's veranda, with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The hotel became a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and joined Hilton's Curio Collection in 2017. A multi-year restoration of the Victorian building and its grounds was completed in 2024.

Architecture and design

The Reid brothers designed a red-roofed wooden hotel in the Queen Anne manner around a central courtyard, with turrets, verandas on every floor and a red conical roof over the main tower that is visible from the bay. The Crown Room, the original dining room, runs under a vaulted ceiling of sugar pine with no interior pillars. The building's wood construction, unusual for a hotel of this size, is the reason it has needed the sustained restoration of recent years. Later additions, the Ocean Towers, the Cabanas, the Beach Village and Shore House, surround the Victorian core.

Rooms and suites

The resort has several hundred rooms across the Victorian building, where no two rooms are quite the same shape, and the later wings, cabanas, beach-village cottages and the Shore House residences. Rooms in the Victorian building are the ones to book for the history; those in the Beach Village give direct access to the sand. Among luxury hotels in San Diego it is the only one where the building is itself the attraction.

Dining

Restaurants line the oceanfront terrace and the courtyard, from the Crown Room, which serves Sunday brunch, to the beach-side bars and a general store in the former outbuildings. The hotel's own ice cream and sweet shops serve the day visitors who come to walk the beach.

Wellness

The Spa at the Del has treatment rooms and a pool of its own, and the main pool terrace faces the Pacific. The beach itself, broad and white, is the resort's principal asset.

Weddings and events

The Del has been a wedding venue since the nineteenth century and performs weddings most weeks of the year, on the beach, on the lawns and in the Crown Room and the Grande Hall ballroom. Its conference facilities serve the San Diego convention trade, with meeting rooms in the Victorian building and the newer wings.

Location

Coronado is reached from downtown San Diego by the Coronado Bridge or by ferry across the bay, and the hotel stands at 1500 Orange Avenue at the ocean end of the town's main street. Some ten kilometres separate the hotel from San Diego International Airport, and the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego has Amtrak services to Los Angeles.