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.