While cleaning out her garage in
early 2006, Murrieta, Calif., resident Veva Haacke discovered a leather case
containing photographs and other century-old relics from the US Grant hotel. The
items had been buried at the hotel—65 miles away in San Diego—as a time capsule
by Ulysses S. Grant Jr., founder of the US Grant and the second son of the Union
general and 18th president. No one is certain how the case ended up in Haacke’s
garage, but her discovery was timely: She returned the collection just as the US
Grant was nearing completion of a $52 million renovation that has helped it
reclaim its place at the top of San Diego’s hotel hierarchy.
 If the Hotel del Coronado is San Diego’s grande dame of beach
resorts, the US Grant is her metropolitan cousin. Grant Jr., who relocated to
San Diego after his father’s death, built the Beaux Arts–style property in 1910
in what is now the Gaslamp Quarter. Nearly a century later, in 2003, then-owner
Wyndham International sold the hotel to the Sycuan band of the Kumeyaay Nation,
a Native American tribe whose ancestors originally settled the downtown San
Diego area about 12,000 years ago.
In their renovation of the Grant—which closed for nearly two
years before reopening last October—the Sycuans offset the hotel’s Beaux Arts
architecture with abstract paintings and bronze Native American sculptures.
Whimsical works by French painter Yves Clement crown the beds in several of the
guest rooms and suites, some of which feature marble showers with six Kohler
showerhead tiles embedded in the walls and ceiling.
 Embedded in the floor of the US Grant’s lobby is a pewter seal of the letter
G, the hotel’s logo, underneath which rests a modified version of Grant Jr.’s
time capsule. The capsule’s contents were too fragile to rebury, so the hotel
scanned every piece onto CDs and lowered the discs, along with a basket
containing photos and a history of the Sycuans, into the lobby’s floor. Several
of the case’s original items are now on display on the US Grant’s mezzanine.
LOCATION Across from Horton Plaza in the Gaslamp Quarter, San
Diego’s dining and entertainment hub.
ACCOMMODATIONS The hotel’s recent renovation updated the 270 rooms and suites
with Empire-style furnishings, marble baths, and contemporary artworks. The
11th-floor penthouse suite features a color-therapy infinity tub filled by a
showerhead that rains water from
the ceiling. FACILITIES Four ballrooms and a fitness center. In-room massages
are available through a local day spa. DINING Grant Grill was a men’s club until 1969, when a group of
local businesswomen staged a sit-in. Today the Grill serves punched-up chophouse
fare to both sexes in its renovated mahogany dining room. CONCIERGE RECOMMENDS At Palomar Airport, less than an hour north in Carlsbad, you and
a companion can take out your aggressions in a dogfight. Incredible Adventures
offers a package for two that includes mock air combat in a pair of Varga
VG-21s. Also available are flights in a biplane and a World War II warbird.
RATES From $570 for a king room to $3,500 for either the penthouse or
one of the two presidential suites.
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