LAGUNA BEACH : Hotel Marks Six Decades of History

Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Charles A. Lindbergh are among the luminaries who dined and drank there while gazing at picture-perfect ocean sunsets. The guest book bears the signatures of Myrna Loy, Faye Wray and Prince Theodore of Russia.

The Hotel Laguna, the city’s most significant historical landmark, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. The distinctive, Spanish-style building has enjoyed a colorful past that has been documented by its current owners, Claes and Georgia Andersen.

“A lot of things have happened here,” said Claes Andersen. “If only the walls could talk.”

Andersen, 43, came to America from Denmark in 1969. His plans were to ski and work as a chef for six months. Instead, he stayed and ended up buying the Hotel Laguna in 1985. Since then, the Andersens have researched the history of the 68-room hotel, which dates back more than 100 years to when the first inn opened in Laguna Beach. At that time, the city was an isolated seaside resort with a year-round population of fewer than a dozen people.

Historical records differ on exact dates, but according to the Andersens, Henry Goff built the first hotel on the site at 425 S. Coast Highway in 1888. The inn, then called Alpha Hotel, was expanded when Goff moved another building to the property. But in the early 1890s, an economic depression led to collapse of the travel boom and land values plummeted. The hotel was sold and deserted by all but squirrels, rats and polecats for a couple of years, the Andersens said.

In 1895, Joseph Yoch purchased the hotel’s mortgage for $600 and reopened what was then a 14-bedroom inn. Two years later, he expanded by combining his hotel with the Arch Beach Hotel, a deserted structure that he moved from Diamond Street in South Laguna.

The 30-room “New Hotel Laguna,” now the largest building in town, was the center of community life and a popular “Gay ‘90s” resort where guests such as Madame Modjeska and “life-of-the-party” James Irvine walked the halls, the Andersens said.

By the 1920s, Laguna Beach was an established art colony and growing rapidly. In the midst of a building boom, the hotel, which had changed hands several times, was condemned as a fire hazard and razed.

Today’s Hotel Laguna, a white Early California Mission-style three-story building with Spanish arches and bell tower, opened in 1930. But the hotel struggled until new owners Lloyd and Gerta Seilset began a promotional campaign aimed at attracting guests from the motion picture industry.

“The price of lodging was so low compared to other film locations and the Laguna terrain was so varied and adaptable to movie-making, that the film makers arrived in droves and the hotel was in the black again in no time,” said a city report.

From then through the 1950s, famous people such as Lauren Bacall, John Barrymore, Joan Fontaine and Rosalind Russell patronized the hotel’s Pier Nine Bar.

“It was the center of town,” said Andersen. “All the civic organizations met here, and a lot of people stopped on their way from Los Angeles to the Del Mar race track. It was the in place for movie people.”

Today, the hotel with its old photograph-lined halls and panoramic views caters to local sunset worshipers, corporate meetings, weddings and summer tourists.

“Some people were upset that we wanted to remodel,” Andersen said of the $2.5-million renovation that has taken place since 1985. “But we had no intention of making a modern hotel. We went through all the historical records before we made any plans.”