Construction on the El Cortez began in 1926 and cost $2.5 million — an enormous sum for San Diego at the time. The architects designed it in the Spanish Churrigueresque style, an ornate, heavily decorated variant of Baroque architecture that was fashionable for California civic buildings in the 1920s. The name honored Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador.

At 14 stories, the El Cortez was the tallest building in San Diego when it opened in 1927, and it held that distinction for years. From its upper floors, you could see Coronado, the harbor, the Mexican hills. The hotel became the city's premier address — the place where visiting dignitaries stayed, where civic events were held, where San Diego presented its best face to the world.

Three United States presidents visited. Bing Crosby stayed there. Elvis Presley was a guest. The El Cortez was the kind of hotel that a city aspires to have when it believes it is becoming something.

In 1956, the El Cortez installed an outdoor glass elevator on the exterior of the building — a novelty that the hotel marketed as the first of its kind in the country. The idea, by various accounts, came from a bellboy who suggested it as a way to revive the hotel's flagging fortunes during a slow period.

Whether or not the bellboy story is accurate, the elevator was a sensation. Glass-enclosed, attached to the outside of the building, it carried guests up the facade with a view of downtown San Diego expanding below them. It was the kind of attraction that generated newspaper coverage, tourist visits, and the particular delight of doing something that had never quite been done before.

The outdoor glass elevator became part of the building's identity, a quirky landmark within a landmark.

In 1978, the El Cortez was sold to Morris Cerullo, a televangelist who operated a Christian broadcasting and media organization. Under Cerullo's ownership, the hotel's public spaces were converted for religious programming, and the historic interiors — the decorative plasterwork, the period fixtures, the Churrigueresque ornamentation that had defined the hotel since 1927 — were stripped out.

The loss of those interiors was a significant blow to the building's historic character. What had been preserved through decades of ordinary hotel operation was destroyed in a few years of religious conversion.

By the late 1980s, the El Cortez had ceased operating as a hotel and its future was uncertain. In 1990, there was serious discussion of demolishing the building entirely.

The demolition did not happen. Preservation advocates made the case for the El Cortez's architectural significance, and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. The exterior, with its tower and Churrigueresque ornamentation, was preserved. The interior was converted to residential condominiums.

The El Cortez today is a condo building in downtown San Diego, visible from across the city as the ornate tower it has always been. The lobby and common areas retain some historic character, though the rooms themselves have long since stopped being hotel rooms.

Some buildings accumulate history the way trees accumulate rings — one layer after another, each revealing something about its time. The El Cortez was a grand hotel, a televangelist's broadcast center, an endangered landmark, and now a residential tower. The building's exterior continues to dominate its block on Seventh Avenue, unchanged in its silhouette if not in its purpose.