The Edgewater Gulf Hotel opened in 1926 as the largest hotel on the Mississippi Coast — four hundred rooms, a Moorish central tower, designed by Marshall and Fox of Chicago, the firm behind some of that city's grandest hotels. It sat back from the Sound at Edgewater Park, between Biloxi and Gulfport, and within a month of opening it was full.
It did not last the way it was built to. The Depression closed it. It sat empty for a decade, was used by Army engineers during the war, and in 1953 became a Catholic seminary, which it stayed until 1968. Then Hurricane Camille came through in August 1969 and broke what was left of it. The hotel closed in 1970. In 1971 it was imploded to make room for the Edgewater Mall to grow. The mall is still there. The hotel is the parking lot and the ground the anchor stores stand on.
What stood here
4 surviving images.
The Edgewater Gulf Hotel in its prime, c.1940
Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History (Cooper Postcard Collection)
Groundbreaking of Edgewater Beach Hotel, 1926
Edgewater Gulf Hotel, Biloxi, Mississippi, USA, 1940
Atwood snapped on the Bridal Path of the Edgewater Gulf Hotel, Edgewater Park, Mississippi, where she is spending a winter vacation., 1930