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