Breakers Hotel (Long Beach, California)
| Breakers Hotel | |
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Breakers Hotel, September 2009
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| Location | 200–220 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, California |
| Coordinates | 33°45′59″N 118°11′26″W / 33.766435°N 118.19048°WCoordinates: 33°45′59″N 118°11′26″W / 33.766435°N 118.19048°W |
| Built | 1926 |
| Architect | Walker & Eisen |
| Architectural style(s) | Romanesque or Spanish Renaissance |
| Governing body | private |
 Location of Breakers Hotel in the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Location of Breakers Hotel in the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Location of Breakers Hotel in the Los Angeles metropolitan area
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Breakers Hotel is a landmark 14-story building on East Ocean Avenue in downtown Long Beach, California. The building opened in 1926 as a luxury oceanfront resort hotel. The building has gone through multiple changes of ownership and has been renamed at various times the Hilton, the Wilton, and the Breakers International Hotel. It has had a history of financial problems and closures and operated for many years as a retirement home. The building has been designated as a Long Beach Historic Landmark.
The Breakers Hotel was developed by a local Long Beach banker and capitalist, Fred B. Dunn. Construction began in the fall of 1925 with a projected cost of $2,250,000.
The original structure consisted of a single-story base that spanned an entire city block with a central tower rising thirteen stories above the main body of the building. The complex also included arcade and basement floors beneath the Ocean Boulevard level.
The development, with architecture described at the time as “ultra Spanish,” opened in September 1926. At the time, the total cost of the luxurious building was said to be $3,000,000. The building opened with a banquet and dinner at which Long Beach’s Mayor Condit and Fred Dunn spoke of an era of success. The banquet also included a program of entertainment by vaudeville artists.
When the hotel opened in 1926 (three years before the opening of the Villa Riviera), the building’s imposing tower, rising 15 stories from the beach, gave it “a prominence greater than that of any other in the city.” On its opening, the Breakers was promoted as one of Southern California’s finest luxury resort hotels. The hotel had 330 guest rooms and 232 ft (71 m) of prime ocean frontage in downtown Long Beach. Other features of the hotel included an elaborate 500-seat dining room known as the “Hall of Galleons,” roof garden, coffee shop, beauty shop, barber shop, Turkish bath, and “smart shops.” The hotel catered to “surf bathers” with a special elevator that transported the bathers, after they had “donned their bathing suits in their rooms,” to the Arcade level, from which there was an entrance to the beach.
One of the hotel’s unusual features was the availability of radio broadcasts in each guest room. An October 1926 article in the Los Angeles Times described the “outstanding” in-room entertainment feature as follows:
Each room in the new hostelry has four radio jets, each connecting with the radio-receiving room in the tower. By plugging in on any of these four jets, programs from broadcasting stations are heard … If there is a particular program on the air which a guest particularly desires to hear, it is only necessary to phone the receiving room and the operator will tune it in.
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Wikipedia