A Grand Comeback for a Grand Seaside Hotel

For people who know it, the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego is not a page of history, it is a chapter. Opened in 1888 by Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story, it was then the largest hotel in the world. The owners set out to create a complex that “would be the conversation of the western world,” a 750 -room Victorian just at the edge of the Pacific.

Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford. Everyone came from, as is known. “Some like,” he was shot at the hotel. Right on the coast from the hotel is the Naval Air Air Station North Island (as in “Top Gun”), and World War II World War, the Hotel hosted naval officers for $ 2 per day. “The manager was worried that they were renting it so cheap, but the officers compensated him more than in the bar,” said Gina Petrone, hotel heritage manager.

Since 2019, the hotel has undergone the largest and most ambitious renewal in its history. Meticulously, deliberately, and very expensive, it has restored the leg to its former glory, and next month, after six years and $ 550 million, the renewal will be completed. (It is currently owned by the Blackstone group based in New York). Construction teams have drawn plaster panels, eliminating layers and layers of paint, dragging fallen ceilings and backing decades of previous renovations so that Dellaim Itseur.

David Marshall, president of Heritage Architecture & Planning, a signature based in San Diego that specializes in historical renewal, supervised the restoration project, with guidance of Mrs. Petrone, using original photographs and the first set of hotel plans to inform the greatest possible amount of the renewal. The elevator cage, the wood in the lobby, the railings in many of the balconies, all original. “We simply follow the deformation on some floors,” he said, while we stop on the undulating balcony overlooking the lobby. “We assure you to be structurally safe, but we wanted to keep that little history.” A little history that can make you feel drunk if you walk too fast.

With a view to the lobby is the newly restored coronation window, a stained glass windows of 700 pieces of a woman, the unofficial pattern of Coronado Island, crowned. “This window was 1888, but moved several times, so it is even more incredible that survived,” said Marshall. (Only a few panels had to be replaced).

The real hotel crown is, well, the Crown Room. Imagine a plane hangar made of oregon sugar pine with roofs of 33 feet high and four huge crown -shaped candlesticks hanging on the central panels. (L. Frank Baum, a frequent guest who wrote “The wonderful Wizard of Oz,” designed exclusive candlesticks). Walking to the crown room is like entering the Titanic in dry land.

For renewal, Mr. Marshall focused on the period from 1888 to 1948, when the hotel was mostly structurally unchanged.

“In the postwar era, people wanted things to be clean and soft. They didn’t want ornaments,” said Marshall. “They dropped their roofs and covered anything that showed the hand of the artisan. Everything was” way of monitoring. “There was an architect at that time that said Real:” Ornamentation is a crime. “

Other changes throughout the decades were more practical. The 750 rooms of the hotel became 371. “There are no two equal rooms,” said Mr. Marshall. “We couldn’t reuse a single drawing.”

“You have to remember that the Victorians did not swim; they did not walk the beach,” Petrone said. “Their swimsuits were made of wool. They come here for the air of the sea, so the best return rooms were the ones that faced the garden.” In other words, the most desirable Roman was the least popular at the end of the 19th century.

The National Historical Preservation Law of 1966, the end of the architectural heresy that occurs in the.

But almost 50 years later, the architects had to discover what was original, which was added later, and perhaps the most important thing, which was hidden in the walls.

Duration of one afternoon the renewal, Mrs. Petrone called Mr. Marshall and told her to look at a place in a guest corridor on the second floor. According to the plans, “there should be a window there,” Mrs. Petrone told him. Indeed, behind the plaster panel sheets, the workers found original amber windows integrated into huge wooden panels.

Then, a few months before the renewal was completed, Mrs. Petrone was in the hall of the dance hall when she looked up. The roof was covered by construction equipment, but there was something only the oil fabric. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Petrone. He had inadvertently discovered the last fresco remover of the building, an explosion of flowers, which has now discovered, restored, restored and marks the entrance to the hotel room.

“People come to have a historical experience, so preserving integrity was very important,” said Marshall.

Apparently, a “historical experience” can take many forms, such as the presence of “Miss Kate”. In November 1892, a 27 -year -old woman named Kate Morgan was registered only at the hotel under an assumed name. Five days later, it was found dead in the backyard, with a single gunshot wound in the head. But according to many people who stay in the one, she never left.

“I receive photos every day of guests who have seen Miss Kate’s ghost,” said Petrone, laughing Conspiratoryly. “You know we like to honor the past here.”

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