Hotel del Coronado

This guide to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego starts with an odd boast: the Crown Room's soaring sugar-pine dome holds together without a single nail, pegged and glued instead. It follows the frantic pace of the build itself, ground broken in March 1887 and doors opened less than eleven months later, with about two thousand laborers, many Chinese immigrants trained on the spot, keeping hammers moving through the night. You'll hear about the lumber yard cutting a million feet of timber on site and architect James Reid building his own brick kiln rather than wait on suppliers. Stand under that ceiling and look for the joinery holding it all up.