Hotel del Coronado
The Hotel del Coronado is one of the few remaining examples of the wooden Victorian beach resort. The luxury hotel was originally built without a single nail (wooden pegs were used instead), in the City of Coronado, across San Diego Bay from San Diego.
The Hotel del Coronado (This is not an endorsement; I’ve never stayed there.) is the largest beach resort on the American Pacific Coast. Its accommodations are legendary. You can read about them on the hotel’s site above.
The history of the Hotel del Coronado is summarized on the Wikipedia pages. According to the account, Elisha S. Babcock (a retired railroad executive), 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 in 1885 for $110,000. Construction of the hotel began in March of 1887, and the hotel was finished 11 months later at a cost of $1M. The Hotel del Coronado was designed a National Historic Landmark in 1977.
Guests of the hotel have included: Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Edison, L. Frank Baum, Babe Ruth, and Charles Lindbergh. Edward VIII of the UK stayed at the hotel when his future wife, Wallis Simpson, lived in Coronado. Many American presidents have stayed at the hotel, including: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight David 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.
Another reported resident of the hotel is the ghost of Kate Morgan, who was found to have died as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The hotel has appeared in several films, including “Some Like It Hot.” which starred Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis, “My Blue Heaven,” and “The Stunt Man,” and has been the setting for at least two novels.
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