Edgewater Gulf Hotel Site — Queen of the Coast

Marshall and Fox, the Chicago firm behind the Edgewater Beach Hotel, designed a second Edgewater — this one for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The 400-room resort opened in 1926 on 600 acres between Biloxi and Gulfport, with a glass-enclosed pool, a golf course, and 95 percent of its rooms facing the Mississippi Sound. Guests arriving by train could step off at the rail station on the hotel grounds. The formal dining room served meals on fine china and linen tablecloths with a view of the Gulf. The hotel had air conditioning when air conditioning meant something. The Edgewater survived the Great Depression and attracted post-World War II conventions. It held its grandeur through the 1960s. Then the Interstate Highway System and the motel chains rewrote the coast's math. The hotel closed in 1970. In 1971, it was demolished by implosion. Edgewater Mall stands on the site now. The hotel explains the resort coast: New Orleans money looking for a weekend on the beach. When the Louisville and Nashville Railroad connected New Orleans and Mobile through the southernmost section of Harrison County in 1870, it opened south Mississippi to recreational development. The grand hotels that followed — the Great Southern in Gulfport, the Buena Vista, the White House, the Edgewater — all rose from the same calculus. Tourists came for mild winters, cool sea breezes, seafood restaurants, swimming, golf, and sailing to offshore islands before air conditioning made the equation obsolete. The Edgewater is gone. What remains is the idea that this stretch of coast was once New Orleans's backyard.