Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant, Hotel building in Old Town San Diego, United States
The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant is an L-shaped Greek Revival building on the southeast corner of the Old Town San Diego plaza. Its first story is the original 1827–1829 adobe; Albert Seeley added a wood-framed second story with balconies in 1869. Photographs show a full-width upper balcony with light-green posts and a salmon-pink lower level.
The building was originally built in 1827 as an adobe home by Don Juan Bandini and later converted into a hotel and stagecoach office in 1869 under Albert Seeley. This shift marked the transition from private residence to a key service location for travelers and administrators.
The name Casa de Bandini honours Juan Bandini, who built the adobe between 1827 and 1829; his grandson Cave J. Couts Jr. bought it back in 1928 as a memorial to his mother, Ysidora Bandini de Couts, and renamed it The Miramar. In the 1840s Bandini added pane-glass windows, a brick-lined patio with a well and a small bathhouse to draw his daughters to visit him and his wife Refugio. The building appeared on episode 56 of Ghost Adventures, aired October 7, 2011.
The building stands on the southeast corner of the Old Town San Diego plaza, within the state historic park, so access is on foot from the plaza sidewalks. The ground floor is reached by broad steps up to a raised porch, and the second-floor balcony is set behind a wooden railing. The hotel was featured on Episode 56 of Ghost Adventures, aired October 7, 2011.
After Albert Seeley sold the hotel in 1888, the building was used as an olive factory, a chapter that followed its stagecoach years rather than preceding them. The 2010 restoration returned the structure to its 1870s appearance.
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