Celebrating the Community History of Windsor Cottage

Celebrating the Community History of Windsor Cottage

By Coronado Historical Association

From a modest residence to member clubhouse today, the Windsor Cottage has an extensive 116 year history that makes it one of the foremost examples of historic preservation in Coronado.

The beach cottage was originally located on Flora Avenue, constructed for Laura H. Slemmons. Built in 1906, it was a rental property for many Navy families. The cottage’s most notable residents were Wallis Simpson and her husband Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., who was the first Commanding Officer of Naval Air Station North Island. An active socialite in Coronado, national and international social circles, Wallis Simpson later gained fame for her marriage to Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor in the late 1930s after his abdication of the British throne.

No other property in Coronado has such an acknowledged or pervasive association with Wallis Simpson and Lieutenant Commander E.W. The cottage is a symbol of LCDR Spencer Jr.’s accomplishments during his tenure as the first Commanding Officer (CO) of North Island. While he was CO the Navy gained possession of the land on North Island, eventually securing 525 acres. This was no small feat due to considerable dispute with the Army, which occupied most of North Island at the time. During this same time was the operational start of the Navy flight school with student aviators and mechanics. At the time the NAS trained 892 seaplane riggers, hull workers, engine mechanics, and other avia- tion mechanics. The flight school graduated 206 officers who logged 35,000 flight hours that covered a total distance of 2,360,000 miles without a single pilot or student officer sent to the hospital for injuries or one seaplane wrecked.

Then-Mayor of Coronado, Mary Herron, in front of the Duchess of Windsor Cottage on September 21, 1989, during its move to the Hotel del Coronado’s property.

Image Courtesy of Coronado Historical Association Collection

During LCDR Spencer Jr.’s command, the Navy also expanded North Island’s role from a focus only on seaplanes to include landplanes and Lighter-Than-Air aircraft. It was at this time that NASNI expanded its role as simply a training facility to the home of the aviation base of the Pacific Fleet. One can read more about LCDR Spencer Jr. and the history of North Island in Jackrabbits to Jets: the History of North Island, San Diego, California by Elretta Sudsbury and the North Island Historical Committee. This illustrated account, issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of North Island’s U. S. Naval Air Station, is the authoritative resource on the subject and is available at the Coronado Public Library.

Portrait of Wallis Simpson, then Mrs. Earl Winfield Spencer, taken by local Coronado photographer Lou Goodale Bigelow. c. 1920.

Image Courtesy of Coronado Historical Association Collection

Here in Coronado, Wallis Simpson and Lieutenant Commander Earl Winfield Spencer Jr.’s occupancy of the home will forever be associated with the property, thanks to the community effort to preserve the cottage. In 1963, Leo and Helen Hansen purchased the property. Their son Mark lived at the parcel with his family in the 1980s when they found the cottage was too small for their growing family, the community gathered to move the cottage to a new home.

The Windsor Cottage exemplifies special elements of the Coronado community’s

historic preservation activism of the late 1980s. The City of Coronado, the Hotel del Coronado, the Coronado Historical Association (CHA), along with a plethora of individual community members joined to support the move of the cottage to prevent it from being razed. As the president of CHA, Gerry MacCartee said, “This is a great example of how working together we can find these old friends a new life and save a piece of Coronado’s remarkable history.”

In the 1980s, Coronado was faced with the demolition of multiple historic buildings, such as the Olde Reid Hotel, designed by Irving Gill, (replaced by what is now the Bank of America building) and Babcock Court (where the Police Department is today). Coronado’s community and its

citizens, infuriated by the demolition of Coronado’s history and heritage, advocated for the preservation of local history and historic buildings. The Windsor Cottage is the one they saved and to many who lived in Coronado at the time, it is the primary symbol of this community effort.

Local stories about the Windsor Cottage’s association with the Duchess of Windsor and her former husband Lieutenant Commander Earl Winfield Spencer Jr. and the efforts to preserve the cottage have been told for decades and are regular talking points of historical walking tours. Today, you can see the cottage at its home at the Hotel del Coronado who has recently announced renovations of the Windsor Cottage that will be completed by summer of 2023.

Photograph showing the progression of the restoration of the Duchess of Windsor cottage in 1992 after it moved onto the Hotel del Coronado’s property.

Image Courtesy of Coronado Historical Association Collection