Hotel del Coronado

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The Hotel del Coronado, known as The Del, is a historic beachfront hotel in Coronado, California, just across San Diego Bay from San Diego. It is a rare surviving example of a wooden Victorian beach resort, and it is famous for its white walls and red cone-shaped turrets. It opened on February 19, 1888, and was then the largest resort hotel in the world.

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At a glance

Country: United States
Location: San Diego, USA
Built: 1888

Quick answers

Where is Hotel del Coronado?

Hotel del Coronado is in San Diego, USA, United States.

When was Hotel del Coronado built?

Hotel del Coronado was built in 1888.

A Victorian beachfront resort with red conical turrets, one of the largest wooden buildings in the US.

It has been named a California Historical Landmark (1970) and a National Historic Landmark (1977). It is the second-largest wooden structure in the United States, after a former blimp hangar in Oregon. The hotel has hosted presidents, royalty and film stars, and it has appeared in many films and books, including the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot.

A hotel to start a town

In the mid-1880s San Diego was in one of its first real estate booms, and developers often built a grand hotel to draw people to empty land. In November 1885 five investors bought Coronado and North Island, about 4,000 acres, for 110,000 dollars. Two of them, Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story, formed the Coronado Beach Company and then built a ferry, a water supply piped under the bay, and railroad lines to support the new town. Babcock wanted a hotel built around a garden court, with a tower at the ocean corner and a dining wing that looked out on the ocean, bay and city.

How it was built

The area had little lumber and few workers, so the company bought the whole output of a big lumber company in Eureka, California, and built planing mills on the site. Architect James Reid built his own kilns for brick and concrete. Construction began in March 1887 on a sandspit full of jackrabbits and coyotes, and around 2,000 labourers, many of them Chinese immigrants from San Francisco and Oakland, worked on it. The hotel's Crown Room has a wooden ceiling held with pegs and glue, and not one nail.

Firsts and fire safety

The hotel was ahead of its time. It had electric lighting at a time when that was new for a hotel, and the wires were run inside the gas lines in case the electricity failed. Reid also installed the world's first oil furnace in the hotel. To guard against fire, a freshwater pipeline was laid under San Diego Bay, and sprinkler tanks and two giant concrete cisterns were built in the basement. The cisterns were never used for rain, but were reportedly handy for storing alcohol during Prohibition.

Fun facts

The 1959 film Some Like It Hot was shot here.
Presidents from Benjamin Harrison to George W. Bush have stayed at the hotel.
It is the second-largest wooden structure in the United States, after a former blimp hangar in Oregon.
Not a single nail was used in the ceiling of its Crown Room.