Hotel · Riverside, California · Built 1902–1931, with later additions to 1950
The Mission Inn
Listed on the National Register as Mission Inn
A block-sized Mission Revival fantasy in downtown Riverside, grown from an 1876 adobe boarding house into a hotel of courts, towers, chapels and roof gardens by Frank A. Miller between 1902 and his death in 1935.
History
In 1876 the surveyor Christopher Columbus Miller took his first paying guest at Glenwood Cottage, a small adobe boarding house in the young citrus town of Riverside. His son Frank Augustus Miller bought it in 1880. As navel oranges made Riverside rich and drew winter visitors from the East, Frank renamed the place the Glenwood Mission Inn in 1902 and began building, never really to stop. Arthur Benton designed the Mission Wing of 1903, with arches copied from San Juan Capistrano, and the Cloister Wing of 1911; Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey added the Spanish Wing in 1914; G. Stanley Wilson built Authors' Row in 1928 and the International Rotunda wing with the St. Francis Chapel in 1930–31. Miller filled them with bells, fountains, grilles, tiles and art gathered abroad, the gilded Rayas altar from Mexico and Tiffany windows from a demolished New York church. As the nomination remarks, the Spanish never settled Riverside and there was never a mission there.
Presidents McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Hoover stayed, Richard and Pat Nixon married here, and Miller began Easter sunrise services on nearby Mount Rubidoux. After his death in 1935 his daughter and son-in-law ran the inn until 1956; ownership then changed hands and parts became apartments and dormitories. Listed on the National Register in 1971 and made a National Historic Landmark in 1977, it narrowly escaped demolition, was restored from 1985 and reopened under new owners in 1992. A roof fire after a holiday fireworks show in 2022 was contained, and in May 2026 the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation agreed to buy it.
“The building is a result of his great imagination--the Spanish did not settle Riverside and there never was a mission there.”
Architecture
The inn fills a full city block and part of another with stone and stucco wings under red tile roofs, ranging from the four-story Mission Wings to the seven-story Rotunda and four towers. Three ground-level courts organize it: the Court of the Birds at the Seventh Street entrance, with a campanile modeled on San Gabriel Mission; the Spanish Patio with its fountain, balcony brackets said to come from the Alhambra and a 1709 Nuremberg clock; and the International Rotunda, where a stair spirals up the inside walls. Above are a dozen more courts and roof gardens. Inside are a redwood-beamed lobby, a cloister music room styled as a baronial hall, a groin-vaulted refectory, and the St. Francis Chapel with its Tiffany windows.
What to look for
- Capistrano-style arches along Seventh Street
- The spiral stair of the International Rotunda
- Tiffany windows and gilded altar in the St. Francis Chapel
- The Famous Fliers' Wall of copper wings
- Bells collected for the Garden of Bells
Setting
The Mission Inn occupies the block bounded by Main, Orange, Sixth and Seventh streets in downtown Riverside, with the pedestrian mall along Main Street on one side. Mount Rubidoux, with its cross and the Miller family's park, rises at the west edge of downtown, and the city's citrus heritage parks are a short drive south.
Timeline
- 1876Glenwood Cottage takes its first paying guest
- 1880Frank A. Miller buys the property
- 1902Renamed the Glenwood Mission Inn; Mission Wing begun
- 1931International Rotunda and St. Francis Chapel completed
- 1935Death of Frank Miller
- 1977Designated a National Historic Landmark
- 1992Reopened after restoration
Where sources differ
- The nomination lists Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, McKinley and Hoover as guests; Wikipedia's longer list of presidential visits is not all documented there.
- The story that Carrie Jacobs-Bond wrote 'A Perfect Day' at the inn is called a legend in the nomination.
- The nomination calls it the largest Mission Revival building in California; Wikipedia says in the United States.
