SAN DIEGO AND CORONADO.
Coronado Beach, Cal., March 5, 1891.
I was induced to think about coming to Southern California by the tempting descriptions in Henry T. Finck’s book, “Scenic Tour of the Pacific Coast,” and by interesting articles in the Century Magazine. Toward San Diego and Coronado Beach my steps were turned by Charles Dudley Warner’s glowing accounts in Harper’s Magazine.
I had always accepted with a grain of salt the flattering reports so widely published, and now that I have seen for myself these wondrous things, my friends will scarcely credit my story, so enthusiastic have I become.
However, I do not intend that you shall rely on my mere “say so.” I’ve been looking up official and other authorities—men of wide reputation, who have a name to lose.
First, as to climate. This is the fifth of March; I have been here one week to-day, and every day of the seven has been about alike—dry, sunshiny, only on one or two days cloudy. On some days of the seven I have seen men bathing in the ocean, and the bathers said that the temperature was enjoyable—this in February. I am told that you can bathe in the surf the year round, but never mind what “I am told.”
And in temperature, I believe it to be the most equable climate in the world—but away with “beliefs,” I have a thermometer of my own, and the hotel has one also, but I have watched closely a government, self-recording instrument which is so placed that no ray of the sun nor no reflection can approach it, and the figures, signed by an official of the signal service in the United States army, record something like this for the current week: five A. M., 55 degrees; noon, 68 degrees; five P. M., 64 degrees. The figures quoted, to be exact, are those recorded on February 28; some days since then have been a trifle cooler.
You may suggest: “If there is almost continual sunshine during daylight, and the ground is always covered with grass and wild flowers, it must be very hot and trying in summer.”
Must it? Remember there is a bay on three sides of Coronado, and the Pacific ocean is on the other. But I will ask you to remember nothing. From the compiled records of the United States signal station here, I have “boiled down” a lot of facts and figures into this condensed form, to wit:—in ten years, from 1876 to 1885, both years inclusive, there were only one hundred and twenty days on which the mercury rose higher than 80 degrees. And the summer nights are far more pleasant than those you experience in New York.
What about the winter then? Here is the answer, gathered in the same way from the same official source. There were only ninety-three days in those same ten years upon which the mercury reached as low as 40, and on no day did it remain at 40 for more than two hours.
By comparing, as I did, the United States record of the mean temperature at Coronado for one year with a computation—made in the same year by Dr. Bennett of the mean temperature of the Mediterranean records, I find that the winter temperature of Coronado is 8 degrees higher than the winter temperature of the most favored foreign winter resorts, and the summer temperature 10 degrees lower, thus making an average of 9 degrees in favor of Coronado as an all-year-round resort.
I haven’t the honor of Mr. Douglas Gunn’s acquaintance, but in his interesting pamphlet concerning this region he says: “With scarcely a perceptible difference between summer and winter you wear the same clothing and sleep under the same covering the year round. The average annual rainfall is about ten inches, with an average of thirty-four rainy days in the whole year. And here most of the rain falls at night; there are very few of what Eastern people would call “‘rainy days.’”
My week’s experience agrees with Mr. Gunn’s observations. He says: “Almost every morning, about two hours after sunrise, a gentle sea breeze commences, attaining its maximum velocity between one and three P.M., then decreasing, and changing to a gentle land breeze during the night. The sea breeze increasing as the sun gains its height, modifies the power of its rays, and keeps the skin just comfortably warm. The gentle land breeze at night cools off the heat absorbed during the day, and makes every night refreshing.”
I could go on and quote to the same effect from no less distinguished an authority than the scientist Agassiz, who was in this locality nineteen years ago; also from Dr. Chamberlain in the New York Medical Record, who says “it is the sanitarium of the Military Division for the Pacific,” and from one known to me personally, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, a New York littérateur of reputation, who calls this “the most charming spot on earth;” but I fear that you might make some such remark as a very young clubman did (fifty years ago) on seeing “Hamlet” for the first time. Asked for his opinion, he said: “It’s a very good play, Fred, but too d——d full of quotations.”
The Location.—Coronado Beach proper occupies about one-half of the peninsula that forms the bay of San Diego. It is situated in the extreme southwestern corner of the State, in latitude 32 degrees 42 minutes 37 seconds north, longitude 117 degrees 9 minutes west, and is four hundred and eighty miles southeast from San Francisco. The peculiar shape of this unique peninsula makes it difficult to describe. Beginning as it does, very near the boundary line of Lower California, in Mexico, it reaches away to the westward for miles, until, at a point opposite the present city of San Diego, it forms a conjunction with what seems to have been an island, which, if squared, would measure about a mile and a half on each side. On the northeast and southeast are the slopes and peaks of the Coast Range and Lower California chain of mountains; southward lies the Pacific ocean; on the west is Point Loma, which forms the western boundary of the entrance to the bay, and breaks the force of the winter winds from the Pacific.
But how do you get to the hotel? Well, Coronado is one and a half miles from San Diego, San Diego is one hundred and twenty-five miles from Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is a station of the Southern Pacific Railroad, also a station of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé road. San Diego is also reached by steamer from San Pedro and from San Francisco, eight hours from the former, two days from the latter.
The Pacific Coast Steamship Company runs a fine line of boats. I made the trip on one, the Corona, a well-appointed vessel of 1500 tons, built on the plan of the Olivette and Mascotte, which run between Tampa and Havana. The Corona makes about thirteen knots; not so swift as the Olivette; no boat of her size is as swift as the Olivette.
Some of the conditions of land and water are similar to those at Fire Island—ocean on one side, bay on the other. But while Fire Island lacks vegetation, every inch of ground here which is allowed to remain so is green, or is carpeted with flowers—literally carpeted. No; Fire Island will not quite answer for comparison. There is no use for a horse, nor is there a horse on the land or the sand of Sammis, while here there are fast trotters, lovely drives and a race course. The two places are alike, in that surf and still water bathing can both be had, as well as sailing and rowing. But there is other sport here—shooting, for instance. I saw two men go out this morning after breakfast, empty-handed (one of them was E. S. Babcock), and I saw them return this evening with a bag which they said contained “about one hundred quail.” I saw the birds counted and they numbered one hundred—lacking eight.
Is the ocean too cool for you or the surf boisterous, there is a plunge bath off shore with water heated to 80 degrees. The tank measures 40 x 60 feet, so you can flounder about like a veritable fish.
But you neither shoot, fish, swim, ride nor drive? Then there are charming and varied walks—on the edge of the rough ocean, on the edge of the smooth bay, on the high bluff at the side of the former, or through pretty country lanes and lovely gardens.
There is a charming walk of about one mile from the hotel to the ferry, and planks are laid about half the distance. You pass by or pass through pretty parks. On each “sidewalk” there is a row of young fan palms six to eight feet high, these alternate with daisy bushes six feet in circumference, the palm trees and bushes being about eight feet apart; here and there rows of young pines ten or twelve feet high.
A Magnificent Valley View.—To my mind one of the most delightful morning or afternoon excursions hereabouts is made at an expense of forty cents, without walking a block. Steam railway from hotel to ferry, boat across the bay to San Diego, next a horse car to cable road, then five miles by cable road through a country rich with gorgeous mountain, valley and ocean views, to “The Pavilion.” The Pavilion, erected on the summit of a mountain, is an amusement building surrounded by well-kept paths and terraces from which a view is had of Mission Valley, a valley and a view not unlike that which you get from the old Catskill Mountain House and which many people prefer to that, because this view is not so extensive and can all be taken in and enjoyed at a glance, with the naked eye. You can see cattle and dogs in Mission Valley from your elevated position, and you see men ploughing and engaged in other farm labor. It is a spectacle that is worth going a hundred miles to see, and if you can afford it you would not begrudge as many dollars as it costs cents to make the trip. You are at a loss for words to describe your feelings of pleasure when the grand Mission Valley view bursts upon you. You remain silent in awe and admiration.
Are these walks and excursions not of your choice, or should the weather be inclement, there are verandas about the hotel measuring a mile or more.
Neither have interior amusement and exercise been forgotten. There is a dancing hall (to which reference will be made further on), there are bowling alleys and there are some billiard tables—as many as thirty—some for men on the lower floor, some for the other sex on the main floor, and some for both sexes on the floor above. Just think of thirty billiard tables in one house.
The tables for women are well patronized. It is remarked that women favor billiard playing in the evening and in evening dress, and it is also noticed that the figure of a beautiful woman with her shapely arm in short sleeves of lace is seen to excellent advantage when leaning over the table, the white arm forming a pleasing contrast in color to the dark green baize of the table.
Coronado’s Rapid Growth.—The Coronado Beach Company was organized a few years ago with a capital of three millions of dollars. The directors are E. S. Babcock, Charles T. Hinde, John D. Spreckels, H. W. Mallett and Giles Kellogg. The president is E. S. Babcock. The company some years ago laid out that part of the peninsula known as Coronado Beach into streets and avenues; but up to January 1, 1887, not a house was built. Now the streets are lined with beautiful villa residences—some of them substantial, imposing brick buildings—handsome cottages and many business blocks. There are three or four hotels, several nurseries, lumber yards, planing mills, foundries, factories, fruit packing establishments and shipbuilding yards. There is a handsome Methodist Episcopal church; the Presbyterian, Episcopal and Catholic denominations also have places of worship. A commodious school-house has a large number of pupils and Coronado has a weekly newspaper. With the growth of young Coronado came the growth of old San Diego—in fact, the latter reflects and shares the popularity of the former. San Diego’s population, which in 1884 was twenty-four hundred, now numbers over twenty thousand. Imagine the population of a town increasing eight fold in seven years.
Neither crooked like those of London, nor narrow like those of Boston, are the streets of Coronado. Like the streets in Philadelphia and San Diego, they are named after trees: Orange avenue is one hundred and forty feet wide, Palm and Olive avenues one hundred feet wide. A boulevard one hundred and thirty feet wide extends around the entire property. What about the sewer system? Unlike Key West, in Florida, Coronado with its unequalled water facilities has taken advantage of its excellent natural position. With the bay and ocean at its doors, the sewer question was quickly and easily solved—every street is already sewered. Investors were not taking any chances when they placed their funds in Coronado’s keeping.
A Good Purchase.—The whole of what is now the flourishing city of San Diego was bought twenty years ago by a Mr. Horton for twenty-six cents an acre. He built the Horton House, and for him the Horton Block was named. San Diego’s neighbor, Coronado Beach, was bought half a dozen years ago for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars by a company which has since parted with a parcel of the land for a million or two. They kept some choice pieces for themselves. Among the parcels of land is that upon which Hotel del Coronado stands, and upon which was expended a million and a half dollars. San Diego and Coronado Beach both experienced “booms” about three years ago, when many men became suddenly rich, some of them since becoming poor. Not a few now are what is known as “real estate poor,” their money is “locked up” in land for which purchasers cannot be found at present—at least not at the price which “raged” three years ago.
Choice pieces on the main street of Coronado Beach sold as high as $500 per front foot, which is about the price of lots in certain parts of New York—say in Harlem—with this difference, that “lots” here are one hundred and sixty feet deep. Had there not been real value in the land when the bubble burst, the bottom would have dropped out entirely when “hard pan” was reached. As it is, land and lots are again finding ready purchasers, and houses are being built in goodly numbers. That there is a steady growth, a healthy increase, and a great future for San Diego and Coronado Beach is a matter of certainty.
Water, Ice and Sanitation.—In my travels about the world I advise my daughters to be cautious of the water in new places and to drink as little as possible; here, on the contrary, I urge them to drink freely. The water is not only pure and most agreeable to the taste, but it contains medical properties which are beneficial to the system. Of this we are assured by testimonials from leading physicians in different States; among them Dr. W. H. Mason, late professor of physiology in the University of Buffalo, N. Y., who, referring to the analysis, says: “The water may be regarded as a regular elixir of life.” Its ingredients are almost identical with the famous Bethesda waters of Wisconsin.
At all events, a company with a capital of half a million dollars has been formed that has secured possession of the springs, fourteen miles distant. It has been “piped” to Coronado Heights and Coronado Beach and the yield is now five million gallons per day, which can be easily doubled by development. The water is used as drinking water at the hotel and with carbonic gas it is bottled for shipment to all parts of the country. If widely and liberally advertised, there is a fortune in Coronado Springs. All the ice used on the premises is made from this spring water, distilled, so that it is absolutely pure, which is more than can be said of Rockland Lake or Maine ice. The machinery at the hotel has a capacity of twelve tons per day.
The Hotel.—The structure, which with the furniture cost one and a half millions of dollars, is built around a quadrangular court 250 × 150 feet, the court being another name for a beautiful and well-kept tropical garden. This feature reminds you of the open garden about which the United States Hotel at Saratoga is built (which house has earned the name of “the model hotel of the world”), only the Coronado garden is filled with tropical plants and trees, and beautiful flowers bloom the year round. It never looks as do the gardens in Saratoga at the end of September. There are orange trees, lemons, figs, loquats, olives, limes, pomegranates, the banana, etc.
Mention of limes calls to mind that by invitation of the courteous and intellectual gentleman in charge of the Coronado nurseries, I cut a large cluster of limes and sent it to a friend in New York as a souvenir. Such a profusion of flowers you never saw, unless you have seen Coronado. For instance, a short time ago, in this nursery, thirty thousand roses were cut in one day from less than a quarter acre of rose bushes, and the flowers were merely cut to save the bushes. Everybody in the neighborhood carried away great baskets of roses to fill bags and pillow-cases.
We were loaded with flowers, cut from the trees and bushes, in the open, as we walked through the paths of the nursery—actually “loaded,” for the ladies of the party not only carried hands and arms flowing over with flowers—but their necks and shoulders were thickly entwined with smilax. The flowers included the delicate heliotrope, the sweet honeysuckle and the sturdy camelia, and they also embraced many flowers new and strange to us, for everything seems to grow here, side by side—everything that grows in the temperate, semi-tropical and tropical zones.
The hotel is situated on the southeastern portion of a beautiful mesa (the name here for a slight elevation) which slopes gradually, in terraces, from its centre toward the Pacific ocean on one side and the bay of San Diego on the other. No one style of architecture has been followed, as the reader will see from the accompanying illustration. It partakes of the Queen Anne style, also of the classic Norman era, bringing up recollections of a grand old Norman castle: but the architect has availed himself of different schools, producing a complete and uncommonly beautiful whole. It is a striking object and the series of buildings form a noble picture against the sky line when viewed four or five miles distant—from San Diego or from the ocean.
The projectors seem to have had a fancy for the biblical number seven. The building covers seven acres; counting guest chambers, sixty parlors, large and small, the private dining rooms and other public rooms, there are in all seven hundred rooms, and there is accommodation for seven hundred boarders.
Why one side of the house is enclosed in glass I cannot understand, when you can sit out doors every day in the year and bask in the sun. This is a good arrangement for Atlantic City, but not necessary, it seems to me, for Coronado Beach.
The Drawing-room.—This is not a cold, bare and barn-like apartment such as you find the parlors in so many American hotels. It is cozy and home-like, with an air of marked refinement. The dark walls are relieved with some choice engravings, and here and there you’ll meet with a living plant, and there is always a vase or two filled with fresh flowers, such as greet the eye and please the sense of smell (in summer time) in an English country hotel, say in the Lake district. The Coronado parlor is cheerful, and with its low ceiling and pillars of unpainted wood, calls to mind the beautiful parlor of the (Spanish) Hotel Cordova in St. Augustine. In fact Mr. Babcock tells me that some of the features of the house are reminiscent of the grand hotels in Havana, where he lived for some time.
Other Public Rooms.—But beside the drawing-room there are a number of other large and beautiful apartments near by—the ladies’ billiard-room, the reception-room, writing-room, chess-room, etc.,—something like the elegant public rooms (which are not so very public) in the Hotel Victoria, London. There are a dozen or more suites of rooms with private parlor for each suite, opening on the garden.
The Dining-room.—This is unique. At first glance, especially if you are in the middle of the room, which is oval, it strikes you as rather bare, monotonous and inartistic; very practical, with room for six hundred people, but not entirely pleasing. But the longer you stay the more you admire, particularly if you are lucky enough to get a table near an end of the room, either that end which overlooks the garden or the end from which you can see the ocean, the bay and the mountains beyond. It measures 176 × 66 feet, and the ceiling is distant from the floor 33 feet. The whole immense apartment, floor, walls and ceiling, is of light colored wood—white Oregon pine and solid oak worked into panels of all sizes and shapes conceivable. The materials and light colors, or color rather, are suitable to this climate and in time you get to like them.
The breakfast room is no miniature apartment either, 47 × 56 feet, with ceiling as high as the dining-room ceiling. It is far more attractive to my eye, its floor being carpeted, and having a high dado of California redwood, which serves to relieve the lighter woods. But Americans demand size for their beauty, and they have it in the dining-room with its floor area of 10,000 feet. To quote the writer of a pamphlet, “it fills the beholder with an astounding admiration.” Better than that, to my taste, they have a skilful chef, and he fills your platter with most appetizing dishes—if you get a good waiter.
Where They Dance.—In the extreme southwest corner of the building is the ball-room, with an extended view of the beach and the ocean; indeed, you cannot get away from the ocean unless you get away from Coronado. The designer of this room has also “gone in” for size. It is a circular room, no less than 60 feet high and 120 feet in diameter, giving a floor area of 11,000 square feet. Too much room for a small “dance,” but splendid for a ball or grand concert.
A feature of the ball-room is a stage for amateur theatricals, which, for size and appointments in the matter of lights, would not discredit a regular theatre.
A Rich and Royal Suite.—Taken as a whole, there are more prettily furnished bedrooms in Long’s Hotel, London, than in any other hotel I have ever seen. The tower rooms in the Oglethorpe, at Brunswick, Georgia, are large and remarkably beautiful, and the bridal suite in the Ponce de Leon is supposed to be very choice, but the Ponce de Leon “show” apartments will not compare in beauty nor in completeness of detail with the bridal suite in Hotel del Coronado. These rooms in the Coronado are not so palatial in size nor in the matter of costly frescoes as the rooms in the London Métropole, in which I found Mr. and Mrs. Augustin Daly last October, but they certainly are among the most tastefully furnished hotel bedrooms I have ever seen, and it is not surprising that the photographic views of these apartments find many purchasers.
The window has an eastern view that is extremely pleasing. To the right are seen the ocean’s rough breakers, to the left is the smooth bay of San Diego, while to the immediate front, as you lie in bed, if the curtains are parted and you are awake at 6.20 A. M., you can see the sun creeping up behind a range of great mountains, miles and miles away. The soft cloud of black smoke curling from the tall, round, red brick chimneys of the electric light engine house between you and the golden sky beyond, does not mar the picture in the least.
Across the centre of the principal room of the suite are three arches, supported by the side walls and by two wooden fluted columns, and under the arches are heavy portières of double silk, salmon pink on one side, old gold on the other. The windows are draped elaborately and beautifully—light blue silk shades, lace curtains next to the windows, with inner curtains of heavy pale blue silk, lined with silk of a rose tint. The furniture is of mahogany, upholstered with blue silk plush, the carpet is a rich moquette in delicate colors, and the toilet set is in Haviland Limoges decorated in deep blue, white and gold. The ceiling is daintily frescoed. From its centre depends a three-light electrolier; from the wall, over the bureau mirror, juts out a bracket with two electric lamps. The mantel is ornamented with two side pieces of Limoges and a bronze cathedral clock—a miniature representation of the clock in the Houses of Parliament, in Westminster. If you do not get from these notes the idea of a luxurious and tasteful apartment, the fault is not with those who furnished it, but with the pen which has failed to describe it.
