World War II: Hidden in Plain Sight

By James Shneer

The next time you are driving from Palos Verdes to Long Beach and you are on Ocean Boulevard near Pine Street look at the tall building on your right - the one with the cupola and the red tiled roof. Now look closely at the cupola and notice the beige colored concrete box that seemingly hangs off the cupola on its ocean side. What you are looking at is history.

The building is the grande dame of Long Beach Hotels, the Breakers, located at 210 E. Ocean Avenue. The hotel was developed by Long Beach banker Fred B. Dunn and opened on Sept. 18, 1926 at a cost of about $3,000,000. The architects were Albert Walker and Percy Eisen. After going through an ownership change and a bankruptcy during the depression, the hotel was purchased in 1938 by Conrad Hilton for $150,000 plus $35,000 in back taxes and was renamed the Hilton Hotel. Although the 1933 earthquake caused substantial loss of life and property in Long Beach, the hotel reportedly sustained little damage. Hilton converted the penthouse into the Sky Room - often considered to be one of the best restaurants in Long Beach. In May of 1950 Elizabeth Taylor and Nicky Hilton, Conrad's son and her first husband, supposedly spent their wedding night in the hotel.

Prior to and during WWII, the Army upgraded the coastal fortifications around the Los Angeles area coast as a defense against an attack by enemy ships, battleships in particular. In 1942, the Army acquired 0.02 acres (about 870 sq. ft.) of the hotel under Lease No. W-868-ENG-4208 for Fire Control Site No. 9. This site was to provide target position data using optical instruments for Battery 241, at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, and Batteries 242 and 128 at the Bolsa Chica Military Reservation in Huntington Beach. Batteries 241 and 242 had two 6" guns each and Battery 128 was to have had two 16" guns which were never installed. The lease was for the cupola atop the 15-story hotel. The site was transferred to the coast artillery on May 12, 1944. The beige box on the seaward side of the cupola is the Army's concrete re-enforced observation enclosure extending out over the side. It contained the instruments for Battery 241. The Bolsa Chica instruments, also facing seaward, were located one flight down on the "balcony" outside the window-less room directly beneath the cupola, which contains the hotel's old water tanks.

The reader will note from the drawings, that despite reports to the contrary, there were never provisions made in the cupola for mounting weapons.

In 1947, Hilton sold the hotel to Frank Fishman, who renamed it the Wilton Hotel. It was during Fishman's ownership, on October 8, 1952, that the lease on the cupola was terminated. Fishman sold the hotel in 1961.

One floor above the Sky Room used to be the open-air Cielo restaurant which was reached by a narrow winding stairway. Access to the cupola's two levels is from a successive pair of steep exterior metal stairways behind the bar in Cielo.

From nearly anywhere near the Breakers or from within the Sky Room one can clearly see the remains of the exterior portion of the modifications made to fortify the cupola for the fire control mission.

The building was purchased in 2017 by Pacific6, a community investment and development partnership organized by John Molina. Pacific6 and Argeo Hospitality founded by Anthony Melchiorri have teamed up to renovate the structure into a boutique hotel with a target of 2023 to reopen.

***The Queen Mary and a Carnival cruise ship viewed through the observation slit (author's collection)***

Jim is a former aerospace engineering manager who, since retiring, has become an author and speaker on a variety of military subjects. To read more about his work, please visit https://easyreadernews.com/the-battle-that-didnt-happen/. To learn about the military history of Fort MacArthur and Palos Verdes, please visit http://www.lulu.com/shop/james-shneer/exploring-the- military-history-of-fort-macarthur-and-palos-verdes/paperback/product-23784472.html to purchase a copy of his recent book.

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