Hotel del Coronado at 1500 Orange Avenue is the most searched single-business destination in San Diego County, a National Historic Landmark since May 5, 1977, and the architectural centerpiece of Coronado Island since founders Elisha Babcock Jr. and Hampton L. Story opened the resort on February 19, 1888. Architect James Reid of the Reid Brothers firm designed the original five-story Queen Anne Victorian structure with scalloped wood shingles, steeply pitched red roofs, turrets, gables, and cupolas that defined Gilded Age seaside resort architecture on the Pacific Coast, and the Crown Room — still one of the world's monumental interior spaces — features a soaring sugar-pine ceiling held together entirely with wooden pegs and no nails or interior supports. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, designed the crown-shaped chandeliers that light the Crown Room and Coronet Room during his frequent stays at the resort, and the hotel served as the primary filming location for Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" in 1958 — a film the Library of Congress added to the National Film Registry. The $550-million-plus Master Plan restoration completed in 2025 returned the Victorian Lobby to its original grandeur, reintroduced the hotel's wraparound Front Porch that had not been seen since 1961, and rejuvenated the 1887 Power Plant, the 1889 Ice House, the 1919 Laundry Building, and the 1887 Oxford Building across the 28-acre beachfront campus. Today the resort operates under Hilton's Curio Collection with 757 rooms spread across five distinct neighborhoods: The Victorian (the original 1888 building), The Views, The Cabanas, Beach Village, and Shore House — each carrying its own architectural identity and room configuration along the Coronado Beach oceanfront. Seven on-site restaurants serve the resort campus, and the Orange Avenue address anchors the southern end of Coronado's village commercial corridor that runs north to the Coronado Ferry Landing bayfront, with Lamb's Players Theatre in the 1917 Spreckels Building, Chez Loma in the 1889 Carez Hizar House, and the Coronado Brewing Company taproom all within a flat walk up Orange Avenue through the 92118 village grid. John D. Spreckels bought out Babcock and Story by 1890 and the Spreckels family retained ownership until 1948, and the resort's paranormal lore centers on Kate Morgan, who died under mysterious circumstances in Room 3327 in 1892 and whose presence guests and staff have reported in the Victorian building for more than a century. Coronado Beach stretches directly in front of the resort — ranked the number-one beach in the United States by coastal scientist Stephen P. Leatherman — and active recreation programming through Coronado Surfing Academy gives guests surf instruction, paddleboard lessons, and beach equipment rentals without leaving the Hotel Del beachfront. The Blackstone Group owns the property today, and the resort's NRHP reference number 71000181 and California Historical Landmark designation 844 cement its status as a protected cultural asset that anchors both the island's tourism economy and its architectural identity on the Pacific Coast.