On January 12, 2019, the Santa Lucia Chapter invited the Commodore Sloat Chapter to join us on a guided tour of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA. Over 30 Chapter members attended!
Our Santa Lucia Regent, Claudia Smith, arranged for NPS’ Base Commander Captain Richard “Coyote” Wiley, the school’s librarian Eleanor Uhlinger and 3 assistants to help lead the tour.
We enjoyed learning about the history of the building and its enduring legacy of art, architecture, and culture, along with some colorful stories of past visitors such as Salvador Dali, Bob Hope and Ernest Hemingway.
The NPS campus is built around the historic Hotel Del Monte, now called Herrmann Hall. The Hotel Del Monte opened in 1880 and was a popular destination for recreation and tourists.
The hotel’s architecture is a blend of 19th and 20th-century designs. The large flag pole in front of the hotel is the starting and finishing point of the original 17-mile drive.
The Naval Postgraduate School relocated to this Monterey location in 1951. NPS offers 77 Master’s, 16 doctoral degree programs and 60 certificates to approximately 1,432 resident students, including more than 167 international students, as well as to 909 distributed-learning students worldwide.