Place
Seaport Marina Hotel (Demolished)
Lost
The Seaport Marina was a Googie-style hotel designed by prominent African American architect Roy Sealey. It was demolished in October 2017.
Place Details
Address
Architect
Neighborhood
Year
Property Type
Community
Seaport Marina Hotel, 2010 | Larry Underhill
Overview
Designed by prominent African American architect Roy Sealey, the hotel was completed in 1963 and originally called the Edgewater Inn. As originally envisioned, each hotel room afforded either a courtyard or ocean view. A separate building housed the public components, including the hotel office, restaurant, lounge, and meeting rooms.
About This Place
About This Place
The Googie buildings’ distinctive features included unique Y-shaped piers supporting a diamond-patterned roofline on the main building, a folded-plate roofline on a circular office wing, decorative concrete block screens, and original diamond-patterned metal railings. Two two-story zigzag guest room wings originally housing 200 hotel rooms were arranged symmetrically to create partially enclosed courtyard spaces.
The mid-century Seaport Marina Hotel was originally slated for demolition to make way for the massive, mixed-use Second+PCH development, but the project as proposed was ultimately rejected by the Long Beach City Council in December 2011 in response to impacts to traffic, wetlands, and incompatibility with current local and California Coastal Commission regulations.
Despite the denial of the Second+PCH development by the Los Beach City Council in December 2011, the property owners later submitted an application for preliminary site plan review for a retail project falling within current zoning regulations for the site.
Our Position
The Conservancy considered the SeaPort Marina Hotel a fine example of Roy Sealey’s work and one of a few surviving examples of a 1960s Googie-style hotel. Although the complex suffered from deferred maintenance and later additions, the buildings maintained a high level of architectural integrity, with distinctive features including unique Y-shaped piers supporting a diamond-patterned roofline on the main building; a folded-plate roofline on a circular office wing; decorative concrete block screens; and original diamond-patterned metal railings.
Despite evidence to the contrary, the City of Long Beach repeatedly failed to identify the Seaport Marina Hotel as a historic resource, including in the 2017 Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the 2nd and PCH project.
The Conservancy consistently pressed the City to treat the Seaport Marina Hotel as a historic resource and recommended that at least one feasible preservation alternative be evaluated. Alternatives to demolition included adaptively reusing the entire historic hotel or incorporating portions — including the most distinctive, character-defining features — into the proposed development.
Members of the Conservancy’s Modern Committee initially brought the mid-century modern hotel to our attention, and it had long been an advocacy issue for Long Beach Heritage. In 2011, the hotel was placed on Long Beach Heritage’s 10 Endangered Properties Watch List.
