Field Guide To Coronado History: Coronados OTHER Grand Hotel

Fascinating, intriguing, or thoughtful tales about people and places in Coronado History presented by your Coronado Historical Association

It was eminent, dramatic, and in its own evocative way a landmark. But it was also the Coronado hotel that youve probably never heard of.

It was built at the same time as the Hotel del Coronado by the same architect. It offered dazzling views, soaring towers and stylish balconies ... and a fresh-swept tidiness with none of that pesky beach sand.

The Hotel Josephine was stirring and conspicuous as sure to catch the eye in 1887 as it would today. Built of the Eastlake architectural style, the hotel rose three-stories high with offices, shops and 64 rooms (and with a fourth half-story for servants and staff). It stood on the highest point in Coronado on Orange Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets.

Hotel Josephine was the handsome big building you saw when you looked across the bay from San Diego or gazed up from the breezy deck of a Coronado ferry ... not the better-known big hotel on the beach.

From Josephines top floors you could look out toward Point Loma with unobstructed views or peer down on ferries coming and going. The hotel featured a large ballroom, many uncluttered meeting rooms, and large comfortable porches designed specifically to catch the airs.

If Hotel Josephine lived today it would be the center of spirited and, undoubtedly, popular campaigns celebrating a triumph of historical preservation.

To differentiate itself, Josephine advertised its value as a First Class Family Hotel. Businessmen, house builders and long-term residents were just as likely to be seen on Josephines wide and comfortable verandas as vacationers.

As conspicuous as it was, Josephine also benefited from a quirk involving its frontage on Orange Avenue. When the first trolley tracks were laid on Orange from the ferry to the Hotel Del, the grade was considered excessive between Third and Fourth Streets so that area was excavated several feet lower. The result (that can still be seen today) was that buildings on either side of Orange look higher and more prominent.

The first meeting of the newly constituted Board of Trustees of the Coronado Beach Company (Coronados City Council of the day) was held at Hotel Josephine on 15 December 1890. For sixteen years, the hotel acted as the citys first city hall with scheduled meetings of the Board and city committees devoted to Finance, Streets and Sewers, Fire and Water, Parks and Shade Trees, and Waterfront & Public Buildings. The city relocated its city hall to the Coronado Beach Company offices at First and Orange in 1906.

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Field Guide To Coronado History: Coronados OTHER Grand Hotel