This elegant Austrian-inspired hotel is the oldest in San Diego
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — People looking for a European vacation can be transported to Austria without having to leave San Diego by staying at the city’s oldest hotel, the Horton Grand.
Built in 1886, the elegant structure that stands in the Gaslamp Quarter was modeled after the Innsbruck Hotel and still has many of the features that made its original source of inspiration unique.
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On the outside, the Horton Grand shows off ornate balconies and bay windows that are typical of Italianate Victorian architecture, while the interior greets guests with a grand staircase, chandeliers and walls adorned with classical art.
Beneath all of the fancy trimmings, the building also comes with a rich history. It’s actually an amalgamation of two separate hotels: the Grand Horton and the Brooklyn-Kahle Saddlery, both built in the mid-1880s.
According to its website, the Brooklyn Hotel opened in 1887 and was a less formal building with a Cowboy-Victorian design. It was later renamed the Brooklyn-Khale Saddlery after a shop that made hand-carved saddles and tack opened on the ground floor of the hotel in 1912.
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Prominent figures including President Benjamin Harrison and King Kalakaua of Hawaii visited the Grand Horton in 1891. Colonel Ed Fletcher, a San Diego politician who helped develop areas of East County and designed the layout of the city of Del Mar, lived in a room at the hotel during the 1890s, according to the Horton Grand’s website.
In the late 1970s, the site was chosen for the Horton Plaza mall development project, and the Grand Horton and the Brooklyn-Kahle Saddlery hotels were scheduled for demolition. Remnants of both hotels were salvaged, including the original bay windows, banisters, and exterior Victorian ornamentation of the Horton Grand as well as the grand oak staircase which cost $200,000 to restore, according to the hotel’s website.
The two buildings were connected by a courtyard and atrium and, in 1986, the establishment reopened as the Horton Grand Hotel. It currently stands two blocks away from Horton Plaza in the Gaslamp Quarter.
The hotel has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.
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