| MOVIELAND'S GREAT DAMES |
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| Our Hotel del Coronado has all the glory
expected of a National Historic Landmark: folklore that has enticed
the romantics, style that has attracted ten presidents and a proximity
to Hollywood that has brought a Who's Who of celebrities to its
doors. It even has its own ghost, a tragic 24 year-old, Kate Morgan,
who committed suicide on Thanksgiving 1892, and was found on the
stairs with a .44 caliber American Bulldog pistol lying beside her. |
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 The Del had, and still has, everything a writer could need for inspiration: Victorian gingerbread architecture, a perfect location on perhaps the most beautiful beach on the West Coast, and 31 acres of exotic flowering plants all thriving in San Diego's mild climate. But no institution can survive living just in the past. The hotel, (619-435-6611 www.hoteldel.com) which cost $1 million including furnishings in 1888, has now spent $55 million to upgrade its rooms, shops and restaurants. The results? The California Restaurant Association just gave the Del its Best Dining Award of 2002 and USA Today has named it one of the Top Ten Resorts in the World. |
The renovations are the first part of the Del's master plan "to preserve and restore its historic elements and enhance its relationship to the Pacific Ocean." |
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It's a timely wake up call to the community. The hotel had been ideal for everyone's favorite comedy movie, Some Like It Hot. But when Hollywood icon, Jeannot Szwarc, who was to direct the movie based on Matheson's book checked the Del's boundaries for the Victorian era film, he was dismayed. "The hotel," he said, "was now surrounded by a forest of television antennae and contemporary horrors." Someone suggested the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. |
| They came to scout America's Summer Place
in the midst of one of Michigan's worst winters. "What's beneath
this snow?" they asked and got the answer, "Flowers!"
"And here?" "Flowers!" Szwarc stamped his feet
on the cold ground, sniffed the air and said, "Perfect. At this
site, on June 27, 1912, Richard Collier found Elise McKenna." |
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