A red roofed timber beach hotel behind a wide pale beach, and the exterior Some Like It Hot used as a 1929 Miami hotel.
What Coronado looks like
is the shopping street, palm lined on both sides. Low shopfronts sit under dark canvas awnings, with bicycles parked along the curb. One corner building has a stepped white Art Deco parapet above its storefronts, and a palm tree shaped neon sign marks a bar next door.
Behind the beach, runs past large shingled and half-timbered houses with turrets, wraparound balconies and hedged front lawns. Smaller wood-frame and shingle cottages fill the blocks further back, one and two storeys, with cars parked in open driveways and lawns running to the sidewalk.
The faces the ocean at the south end of the beach, seven floors of white wood siding built in 1887 and 1888, under steep red roofs and conical corner turrets. Its lawn runs from the porches down toward the sand, framed by palm trees and clipped hedges.
Golf course fairways run along on the inland side, palm trees along the water and houses beyond them. covers the northern end of the peninsula, an active base closed to visitors, reached from the mainland by the Silver Strand and a high arched bridge to San Diego.
Shot in Coronado
Some Like It Hot filmed only the exterior of the Hotel del Coronado, standing in for a fictional Miami hotel in 1929. The interior scenes were built on a soundstage elsewhere. Wicked Wicked filmed entirely on location at the hotel in 1973. Baywatch shot two episodes of its fourth season there too.
Some Like It Hot, 1959
The hotel's ocean-facing lawn
Played the Seminole Ritz Hotel, Miami, Florida, 1929
The lawn between the hotel and the beach stood in for a 1929 Miami Beach hotel, along with the ocean-facing rooms above it. Marilyn Monroe's beach and lawn scenes were shot along this same stretch, with the hotel's turrets and porches visible behind her.
What Coronado can double for
Watch Hill in Westerly, Rhode Island
Watch Hill's shingled cottages are close in scale and material to the houses on Ocean Boulevard, turreted and set back behind hedges facing the water. Most date from the same shingle style decades, the 1880s to the 1920s. Keep palm trees out of a wide shot, since Watch Hill's shoreline has none. Its stone walls and bare trees look more New England than Southern California. Try searching shingled cottages turreted now.
Cape May, New Jersey
Cape May keeps a comparable stock of large wooden Victorian hotels and guesthouses from the same decades as the Hotel del Coronado, with wraparound porches and steep rooflines facing the beach. The flat streets behind the hotels carry smaller wood-frame houses in the same walkable way. Cape May's houses run to painted gingerbread trim and narrower lots than Coronado's plainer shingle and clapboard, so a close porch shot needs the right house. Try searching Victorian wood beach hotel now.
Balboa Island in Newport Beach, California
Balboa Island's flat grid of small houses and its narrow, palm shaded shopping street on Marine Avenue match the scale of the blocks off Orange Avenue. Both are low rise, single family streets a short walk from the water. Balboa Island's lots are smaller and its houses sit closer together, so a wide street shot needs a block with more space between houses to hold the comparison. Try searching flat grid small houses now.
