Glued to the ceiling with a wallpaper paste, a fabric shrouded the Hotel Del Coronado’s ballroom foyer for almost a century.
This effort to hide any extra detail was a product of the 1930s, an era which celebrated a monochrome style, according to David Marshall, a preservation expert for Heritage Architecture & Planning. While the fabric may have been installed in the 30s, it was not originally designed into the plans for the ballroom, which was built in 1888.
It wasn’t until a crew took down the drop ceiling to install fire sprinklers in the ballroom as part of the Del’s current renovations, that the ceiling’s fabric became visible.
And under it, a sliver of color appeared in the corner.
The fabric was peeled back to reveal a fresco-secco mural dating back to 1888, when the hotel was first built.
The mural has a circular motif center with a unique floral arrangement
“There were other rooms in the Del that had this same kind of paint treatment,” Marshall said. “Just next to us here was the music room and they had the ladies parlor—and they had the same kind of treatment. So, this was the only remaining piece that has survived, and luckily, it survived very much intact.”
Gina Petrone, the heritage manager at the Hotel del Coronado, said that newspapers revealed that artists began painting inside the Hotel Del during August of 1887 and didn’t finish until April of 1888.
The paintwork of this particular mural was completed in that time frame by two artists, Jacob Gumpertz and Peter Johan Valdemer Busch, who also painted murals in the Theater at Madison Square Gardens, according to Petrone.
Marshall explained that the fresco mural is a technique most notably associated with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, which was completed on a wet plaster, allowing the paint to absorb into the material for a more permanent finish.
A fresco-secco, on the other hand, is done on a dry plaster and is less durable but easier to complete, which made sense with the 11 month building timeline for the entire hotel.
Almost a century later, most of the mural in the ballroom has remained intact even after the fabric was removed and the wallpaper paste was cleaned.
A team from EverGreene Architectural Arts has been working to restore the damaged areas and touch up portions that needed to be repainted.
“The Del reveals itself everyday; we find out something new,” Marshall said.
