THE BEAUTIFUL AND HISTORIC DEL CORONADO HOTEL AND RESORT.
Coronado beach is the best, most pristine public beach in the San Diego area and was donated to the city by Del Coronado. They kept a small pie-shaped slice of the beach private, to provide for their special guests and condo owners. The beautiful Coronado beach is located between The Del and the Pacific Ocean.
Although the Del Coronado Hotel gave 99% of their beach to the city, making it a public beach, the hotel does have two pools for the exclusive use of their guests. It has a large swimming pool open to all guests and a smaller, more exclusive pool, for the private use of their spa guests.
This is the understated sign in front of the hotel. There are flowers and palm trees all around the property.Hotel del Coronado has a Victorian clock on Ocean Avenue side of their property for the pleasure of all who pass by.
Hotel del Coronado (a Curio Collection Hotel by Hilton) is an iconic destination on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, just minutes from downtown San Diego. It’s Coronado Island setting, with a wonderful white sand beach, captures the relaxed beauty and seaside charm of quintessential Southern California living.
California’s surf and sun have lured guests for over a century to the iconic and historic Hotel, often called the Del, it has become a travel destination all of its own.
The Hotel turned 130 years old this year. Since it opened, almost all of our United States Presidents have made it a point to visit or spend the night at the Del Coronado Hotel. Famous guests have also flocked here, including kings, Princes, plus many movie stars and starlets. Newsmakers from every era, have been wined and dined in the famed Crown Room and there is even a hotel guest who never left. A ghost by the name of Kate Morgan is said to reside in the building. The maid service will only clean her room #3372, during bright daylight hours.
The hotel is California casual and offers many options for dining on well-prepared meals for families or adult couples who want adult beverages. Plus there is a 5 Star, top-of-the-line restaurant, “1500 Ocean,” many say it’s the best gourmet dining in all of San Diego.
The Hotel del Coronado is an inviting experience! There are many, many stories of past guests who have enjoyed the resort. You should come too and write your own story in the white sand, have fun and relax watching the beautiful sunsets over the Pacific.
The main lobby has stayed much the same for the 130 years the hotel has been open. Depending on the number of guests expected to check in or check out, furniture is placed in this main lobby.
The Del is a rambling structure and has been remodeled many times. Today, of the numerous rooms in the hotel, no two have the same layout, shape or square footage.
Another view of the Del’s distinctive red roofline peaking through the palm trees out front. The large cone-shaped architectural turret (left) is currently just for show, it’s above a large meeting room used for conventions and low ceilings were needed for better acoustics. Originally the room’s ceiling opened up to see the windowed balcony, all of the small gabled windows above and the whole interior of the cone, all the way up to the “widows walk” on top.
Above is an early vision, before construction, of how the resort might look. You will notice this image does not include the distinctive cone-shaped dome which has become the focal point of the hotel and was an engineering marvel at the time it was built. The dome is now the branding image for the Del Coronado Resort. Even though the above illustration has many of the same elements found in the final hotel, without that cone-shaped dome with its “widows’ walk”, this rendering only resembles the Del!
The Del Coronado is a destination resort hotel with many amenities and activities. The cost to stay starts at a reasonable, but still luxury price point, of $300 – $350 per night and it goes up from there.
The highest level of fine dining in all of the San Diego area can be found at the 5 Star “1500 Ocean” Restaurant facing the ocean. The food and service at “1500 Ocean” do not disappoint!
Can you think of a better location anywhere for enjoying drinks, than while watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean at the hotel’s Ocean View Lounge?
The public can rent chairs and umbrellas from the hotel to enjoy their day of relaxation on Coronado’s white sand beach.
Del Coronado is more of a resort to be experienced than it is a hotel just for spending the night.
The HISTORY of the Del Coronado Hotel
California was discovered and named by Spanish explorers sailing past Coronado Island and into San Diego Bay.
An 1898 painting by Frederic Remington portrays Spanish Conquistadors on their quest to discover the treasures of the Americas.
How did Coronado island get its name?
In 1602 a Spanish explorer, Sebastian Vizcaino, given the charge to map the Pacific coastline for Spain, sailed past four rocky islands off the San Diego coastline, naming them Las Yslas Coronadas (The Crown Islands – now: San Nicholes, Santa Barbara, Santa Catalina & San Clemente islands). When Vizcaino entered the deep bay, he named the site “San Diego de Alcalá” (for Saint Didacus of Alcalá – the literal translation is “The Castle of Saint Diego”). The crude map Vizcaino drew of the bay in 1602 provided the world with its first depiction of Coronado island.
The first European to visit the region was explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, sailing under the flag of Castile, but possibly born in Portugal. Sailing his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain. Cabrillo claimed the bay (San Diego) for the Spanish Empire in 1542, and named the site at that time “San Miguel.”
How did California get its name?
If you look above the entrance, on the second story of the hotel, what looks like just another window, is actually a 19th-century stained-glass artwork, very roughly based on the mythological story about Queen Calafia. The stained glass art was originally in the hotel’s bar. The myth is about a Moorish queen who ruled over an island somewhere past the Orient, named California. The name of the state comes from this colorful myth, which was made popular in a work of 15th-century Spanish literature.
This hard to find, stained glass window is located above the entrance of the Del Coronado Hotel and shows a 19th-century illustration, that’s very roughly based on the mythological character, Queen Cālāfia. Depicted in this artwork is a beautiful 19th-century youthful European queen, holding a crown over her head as the sun shines brightly on her mountains, flowering fruit filled valleys, and the ocean surrounding her Queendom. In the myth, Queen Cālāfia’s island was named California, an exotic and extraordinary place located somewhere past the Orient, (as viewed from Europe).
When Sebastian Vizcaino 1st arrived, the area was populated by the indigenous people of California (see map for tribal boundaries). For all the Spanish knew, the land they discovered was an island, because of the long peninsula they had sailed past reaching out into the Pacific, now known as Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula.
A map showing all of the indigenous peoples of California.
Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula
The street plan for Coronado (the city) when the hotel was first built.
Coronado Island today.
Coronado was a windblown, barren island but to some very wise Southern California investors, it was the perfect place to build a tourist resort.
When the plan was launched, Coronado Island had no infrastructure. First to arrive was electricity. Clean water in, and wastewater out was a much more expensive and difficult problem to solve.
The island was purchased by Elisha Spurr Babcock, along with Hampton L. Story, and Jacob Gruendike. Their intention was to create a resort community, and in 1886, the Coronado Beach Company was organized. By 1888, only two years later, they had completely built their Hotel del Coronado and laid out their real estate venture. It quickly became a major Western resort destination. Coronado was incorporated as a town on December 11, 1890, and since the whole island was the investor’s project, they also built a schoolhouse and formed athletic, boating, and baseball clubs.
John D. Spreckels’ also created a lower priced, “Tent City Resort”, so everyone could afford to visit their island.
In 1900, a second tourist/vacation resort area, just south of the Hotel del Coronado, was established by John D. Spreckels. He named it “Tent City.” Over the years the tents gave way to cottages, all rented to tourists. The last cottage was finally torn down in early 1941.
The Del has appeared in numerous works of popular culture and many think the hotel was the inspiration for the Emerald City in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. However, other sources say Oz was inspired by the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, where L. Frank Baum lived in 1893. The author loved both places and never resolved this issue. Baum did live on Coronado Island and thought of the hotel and the island as a paradise. While he was writing the books, Baum was able to see the magical compound of a hotel from his front porch, located near the hotel.
L. Frank Baum of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” fame. In San Diego, local’s claim the beautiful silhouette of the Del at night was Baum’s inspiration for the “Emerald City”, but Chicagoans also claim “Oz” to have been inspired by their 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
The famous “Crown Chandeliers,” in the main dining room, absolutely / positively were designed by L. Frank Baum.
Baum did design the crown-shaped chandeliers in the hotel’s wooden beamed main dining room. Because of the reported association with “Oz the Emerald City,” the color green has become associated with the city of Coronado and it’s sometimes referred to as “The Emerald City.” The colors of Coronado High School are green and white and the Coronado city flag is a tricolor, green-white-green banner, featuring a crown at its center.
An old photograph showing the lobby and the single ladies balcony on the second floor.
A contemporary photo of the lobby and balcony.
Detail of the woodwork in the Del’s lobby ceiling. The lobby featured Illinois white oak, and the Crown Room ceiling was constructed of Oregon sugar pine, chosen for its lack of knotholes. Hotel del Coronado used other varieties of lumber including: Douglas fir for framing; and California redwood for exterior siding (thought to be termite resistant); plus orders for hemlock; and cedar have been found in the hotel’s historic records.
Shown, the Del’s lobby elevator and main staircase up to the guest rooms. The elevator is the oldest continuously operated elevator in the United States.
The interior of the elevator. It must always have an operator, just as it did when first installed.
Since it was built in 1888, most of the Presidents of the United States have made it a point to stop by and experience the Del Coronado Hotel. Here FDR visits the Del.
President Taft, center, is shown visiting The Del Coronado Resort, surrounded by power brokers of that time period.
Many movies have been shot on the property. Here Marilyn Monroe walks around The Del Coronado Resort while filming “Some Like It Hot” at the hotel. During the golden age of Hollywood, the “Stars” considered the Del Coronado Hotel a place where they could escape the glare of Tinseltown.
The upper balcony of the lobby was reserved for unaccompanied and pregnant women. They also had their own private entrance and their own private staircase. At that time unaccompanied women were considered very vulnerable and the separation allowed them to be socially correct and comfortable in the hotel. Pregnant women did not want to socialize in public during while in their delicate condition and the balcony, back stairs, and a separate entrance gave them a way to also be discrete.
A contemporary view of the lobby and the unmarried lady’s balcony. Married women could socialize in most of the same public spaces as men, but never walked about alone.
A “Crown Ornament” was the subtle marker indicating the entrance to the women’s private staircase, leading to the unaccompanied women’s and pregnant women’s discrete entrance.
Originally the hotel pool was indoors.
The original Del Coronado Ballroom was located under the large cone-shaped dome. Sometime in the recent past, the ceiling was lowered to be below the balcony, for acoustical reasons. The room is now mostly used today as a meeting room for conventions.
Here you can see the lowered ceiling under the cone-shaped large dome.
The first Christmas tree “EVER” to have electric lights, shown here in an old photograph, was created as a promotion for the Del Resort, on the grounds. It was planted where it could be easily seen from the windows in the main dining room.
Today, that same tree shown in the old photo above, now officially named “The Christmas Tree,” has grown into a huge California Pine.
Many years ago, the Oxford Hotel was purchased by the Del and moved across town to be adjacent to the hotel. It was needed for staff housing. Today it is used exclusively as the Del Coronado’s business offices.
A side view of the Oxford Hotel, showing where the building was cut into two segments, in order to move it through the streets of Coronado.
Hotel Del Coronado shares Coronado Island with one of the most important Naval Bases in the United States. Here some Navy-Seals-in-training are shown meeting with former USA Vice President Joe Biden.Statistics for Coronado Island’s two largest employers.
(Source – Most photos were taken by ARTS & FOOD staff and copies of historic pictures shown were taken with permission during a tour of the hotel. Other photos and information were gleaned from multiple sources.)
