Hotel El Granada opened in 1908 as a two-story stucco Mission-style building with twenty guest rooms upstairs and a ballroom downstairs. The town's first commercial building and site of the first post office, it featured piped-in water and a modern sanitary system, with rooms costing two dollars a day. Developers of the Ocean Shore Railroad served free lunches there to attract vacationing families and home site buyers to Granada, where "Jewel of the Coast" lots sold for $250 to $1000. After the railroad's demise in 1920, the hotel fell on hard times. During Prohibition, it became known as a speakeasy, and in later years it served as a dormitory for a local girls camp. Fire destroyed Hotel El Granada on May 25, 1954, and two nearby steps remain to mark its entrance.