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visiting celebrities and dignitaries, from President Dwight Eisenhower to Bing Crosby.”
Leaders who’ve visited
El Cortez
Presidents Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton and Dwight
Eisenhower; Vice President Al
Gore; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.;
Robert F. Kennedy
DON MIRRA PHOTOGRAPHY
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: the Don Room is set for an elegant
wedding, the main entrance to the El Cortez, bright lights over
the big city
Thermidor in the hotel’s dining room that year was just $4.95.
The spacious Starlight restaurant was added to the 12th story in 1956, along with the world’s first exterior glass
elevator. On weekends, people waited in a line stretching around the block to ride the “Starlight Express” skyward for
dinner and dancing.
In 1959, owner Harry Handlrey added another first—a moving walkway called the Travolator, which arched over
7th Avenue, connecting El Cortez with an annex hotel and garage (today a Holiday Inn Express) across the street.
During the 1960s and ‘70s, the hotel’s image became tarnished, and the property fell into disrepair. In 1978, El
Cortez was purchased by San Diego evangelist Morris Cerullo, who closed it. It was sold again in 1981, but stood as a
ghostly shell for more than two decades while several renovation schemes fell by the wayside.
Vagrants were known to sleep on the Travolator bridge until its demolition in 1986. The entire El Cortez complex
narrowly escaped demolition, in 1990, when it received historic designation by the San Diego Historic Site Board.
Anthony Block, part of the development team that returned El Cortez to its 1927 splendor, said that when he first
walked into the heavily vandalized building in the 1990s, there was nothing left but graffiti, bird droppings and “empty
wino bottles.” The ornate sandalwood roof of the octagonal Don Room had partially collapsed.
Block and former business partner Peter Janopaul purchased the property in 1997 for $2.4 million—less than it cost
to build it in 1926. Though Block said they had hoped to re-create the Sky Room experience and restore the exterior
glass elevator, modern building codes precluded those plans. Instead, the duo focused their attention on the Don
Room, which has become “the premier destination for wedding events,” Block says. “That’s pretty much what it’s going
to be for the next generation.”
El Cortez was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 for its architecture and engineering. Today, its
iconic neon sign, installed in 1937, continues to illuminate the skyline, welcoming passengers landing at Lindbergh Field
and serving as a beacon of history above the downtown neighborhood that’s official name is now Cortez Hill.
Celebrities who’ve visited
El Cortez
Ginger Rogers, Ethel Barrymore,
Bo Derek, Leeza Gibbons,
John Stamos, Leslie Nielson,
John Ritter, Sarah Michelle
Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr., John
Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Burgess
Meredith, Spencer Tracy, Clark
Gable, Myrna Loy, Jack Benny,
Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Jim
Morrison, Jimi Hendrix
El Cortez in TV and Film
Film: Almost Famous (2000)
and A Ticklish Affair (1963); TV:
How to Marry a Billionaire and
Extreme Makeover
Prominent features and
year added
The El Cortez’s iconic neon sign
with 12-foot-tall letters (added in
1937, restored in 1999)
Sky Room (1940)
100-room Caribbean Wing and
grand ballroom (1946)
Starlight restaurant and glass
elevator (1956)
Travolator bridge (1959)
El Cortez
702 Ash Street, Downtown,
619.232.6730, elc.cc
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