Hotel Riccadonna, ca. 1910.

In 1904 a hotel was constructed on the corner of Ocean Parkway and Sea Breeze Avenue. It was a three-story wood framed building called the Shelbourne. The hotel had 150 guest rooms, 65 bathrooms and a phone in every room (quite a feature in the early 20th century).

In 1906 the hotel became the Riccadonna, named for a family whose patriarch Abele Riccadonna, an Italian immigrant, had become a successful caterer and restaurant owner in the the 1890s in Manhattan. The hotel catered to the moneyed classes that had been the early visitors to Coney Island. (It was a latecomer to that world, as by 1905-1910 the atmosphere of Coney Island was becoming more working class and amusement park based.) In 1909 the hotel, already quite grand, was enlarged considerably. The additions included 50 more guest rooms and all new dining rooms, parlors, smoking, and billiard rooms. There are conflicting stories about the changing of ownership in 1910-1911 and the last years of the building, but it is not hard to imagine that it would have declined and been demolished along with the other grand hotels and resorts in the late 1910s and 1920s. Today a large condominium building occupies the site.