Hotel Redondo

Hotel Redondo
Hotel Redondo, circa 1900
General information
Status	Demolished
Architectural style	High Victorian
Location	Redondo Beach, California
Inaugurated	1890
Demolished	1925
Cost	$500,000
Technical details
Floor count	3
Other information
Number of rooms	225

Hotel Redondo was a hotel in Redondo Beach, California that opened in 1890 and was demolished in 1925. The hotel, which had 225 rooms in three stories, was built in a High Victorian style. Construction cost approximately $500,000. At the time, it was one of the most important hotels in Southern California.

When Don Miguel Dominguez died in 1882, he owned a massive parcel of land, Rancho San Pedro, which was passed on to his six daughters. A portion of that land, known as the "Ocean Tract", went to three of his daughters, Susana, Guadalupe and Maria de Los Reyes Dominguez. In 1889, this 433 acre Ocean Tract was sold for $12,000 to two Oregon steamship operators and entrepreneurs, Robert Thompson and Captain John Ainsworth. Looking to expand their growing company, "The Oregon Navigation Company", Thompson and Ainsworth formed the Redondo Beach Company and promoted and developed the area as a tourist destination, as well as, a port for their fleet.

As America approached the 20th Century, the town of Redondo Beach had just been incorporated and was determined to become a worldly destination. Located on the southern shores of the Santa Monica Bay, it had a large submarine canyon allowed wooden cargo ships, with their deep hulls, to get close enough to the coast to offload their goods onto train cars waiting on one of the several wharfs along the beach.

Los Angeles was booming and in need of a port to funnel goods into the local marketplaces. Rail lines connected Redondo Beach to downtown businesses and the return trains brought thousands of people to this coastal paradise. Thompson and Ainsworth decided a grandiose hotel was needed to accommodate the growing numbers of passenger ships and to further support their efforts of enticing tourists and commerce to visit Redondo Beach.

In the later months of 1887, the Redondo Beach Company, responsible for managing construction of the Hotel Redondo, posted advertisements in the Los Angeles Herald newspaper calling on architects to submit plans for building a "Large First-Class hotel to be equal in all respects to the Del Monte in Monterey". A premium price of $1000 was to be paid to the selected architect.

In January 1888, notices were advertised in the Los Angeles Herald for contractors to submit proposals for excavating 30,000 cubic yards of earth to make way for the basement of the soon to be constructed Hotel Redondo.

On March 28, 1889, Mr. H. L. Wyatt, a contractor in Redondo Beach was awarded the contract to build the since modified plans for the Hotel Redondo. Sources conflict, but the price tag for this massive undertaking has been quoted at approximately $250,000 or built at a cost of $1,200,000 with an additional $55,000 in fine Victorian furnishings.