Hotels Go Back Together the Hard Way--Piece by Piece

It cost about $30,000 in the 1880s to build the luxurious Horton Grand and Grand Saddlery hotels in the heart of the then-budding community of San Diego. Today, these two hotels are being reconstructed brick by brick at a cost of $12 million.

When completed in May, the hotels--rebuilt side by side and connected by a 90-foot lobby in front and a new wing in back--will become a full-service, 110-room tourist and convention complex in Victorian style, according to Dan Pearson, managing partner of Gaslamp Quarter Enterprises, the firm doing the restoration.

The hotels were in danger of demolition several years ago. The Horton Grand was in the way of the new Horton Plaza shopping center. The Grand Saddlery, also known as the Brooklyn Hotel and by several other names over the years, was unoccupied and in disrepair. Its site on E Street was designated for a new senior citizens housing complex.

At that point, the novel idea to dismantle and rebuild the hotels at another location was hatched. Relying on $2 million in federal and city grants, $8.1 million in historical rehabilitation bonds and $2.1 million in private financing, Pearson’s group undertook the project.

But what seemed relatively easy on paper turned out to be anything but that. Because there wasn’t the internal framework found in modern buildings, the hotels couldn’t be moved in one piece. Instead, workers had to dismantle the structures brick by brick, door by door, window by window.

It took five months to dismantle the Grand Horton and three months to take apart the Grand Saddlery. The two hotels were then stored in warehouses and restoration work was begun.

“In someplace like San Francisco, you can find 20 or more places that specialize in that kind of work,” Pearson said. “But in this town we found that only about nine companies did this. We hired seven of them.”

As a result, restoration work on about 40 tons of material has been scattered at five separate warehouses. There, craftsmen have done the delicate work necessary to restore the pieces of the hotels to their former splendor. Once completed, the various parts are assembled at two warehouses across the street from the hotels’ new site on 4th Avenue.

In order to qualify for a 20% federal tax credit, at least 75% of the original brick must be used on the reconstructed hotels’ exterior walls. Pearson says 88% of the exterior walls will consist of the original brick.

The rebuilt hotels will use 10 of the original, two-ton bay windows. Since the new structure will have 44 such windows, it was necessary to make plaster molds of the original bay windows and then build replicas. Similar procedures were followed for the hotels’ door frames, other windows, floor moldings and trim.

While most interior ornaments were either missing or unsalvageable, those that remained are being refinished and will become centerpieces in the new structure. One is a 60-foot-wide skylight. The other is a huge, oak stairway that once graced the Grand Horton. It is being restored at a cost of $250,000.

Furnishings for the hotels, which will be mostly antiques, will come from a variety of places. Pearson said gas fireplaces have been bought in Great Britain and New England, an ornate bar built in the 1750s was found in an old warehouse in Arizona, and armoires were purchased in England. The armoires will be used in the Horton Grand, which still doesn’t have any closets.