Old Riverside Foundation

Home builders at work, 1928.

Home Builders At Work (1928) An early industrial film showing how a modern house is constructed. To purchase a clean DVD of this film for personal home use or educational use contact us ...

One more item from yesterday’s treasure trove: be on the lookout in Riverside for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!

Here’s something you don’t see everyday: 1880s / 1890s Riverside hotel registers that were re-used as albums for law-enforcement notices sent to Riverside from around the country. A glimpse of another era!

Salvage Sales & Free molding,trim,project wood:
Saturday August 17th, we will be open at 9am till the last person leaves, we are not open all day, our doors are located at our second site and we open it up to those seeking doors After we lock up at the Weber House, please let us know if your only looking for doors and we’ll as best let you know about what time to arrive!
We are located at 1510 University Ave in the parking lot of the Courtyard Marriott hotel!
Please bring pics and measurements to help best assist your needs!
Dan can be reached at 951-452-2638 cell/text for any questions!

The 1910 Isaac & Sophie Logan Residence at 4555 Mission Inn was designed by architect Lester S. Moore. Moore is credited for being one of the first to recognize and appreciate Mission style as a worthy architectural form. Ike Logan was the Riverside County Recorder, and was also known as “the Bell Ringer of Mt. Rubidoux.” For thirty years, Logan would hike up the hill to ring the bell at 7:00 am daily, rain or shine. The ringing could be heard across downtown.

ORF Secretary, Vintage Home Tour head honcho, and historian Nancy Parrish shared the story of the Waite House, a 1884 Queen Anne Victorian.

The Lillian Spurgeon House (1927) designed by architect Robert H. Spurgeon, Jr. as a residence for himself and his widowed mother on “Little Mount Rubidoux.” Spurgeon studied at Columbia University, then the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1916. He began his practice as an architect in Riverside in 1920 after two years in Los Angeles. He designed over thirty homes in Riverside in an elegant blend of Spanish Renaissance-inspired Beaux-Arts and Spanish Colonial Revival. Spurgeon married and left Riverside for Santa Barbara in 1929. He died unexpectedly in 1931 of a ruptured appendix at age 37. The house is Riverside Cultural Heritage Landmark 111.

We hope you all are staying cool as we enter the hot stretch. A high-flying plunge into the pool at the Mission Inn sounds good right now! Photo by Avery Field from the pool’s opening in 1948.

Get the inside scoop on how Old Riverside Foundation is preserving the photography of Riverside architect Peter J. Weber….

https://thevillalobosgroup.com/blog/unearthing-an-archive/

Photo: Patio de Los Leones, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, March 1932.

It’s not common for an architect to design phases of a project over a twenty-year stretch, but that’s what Peter J. Weber did with the firm of G. Stanley Wilson in four stages at St. Frances de Sales on Mulberry Street in Riverside. First up in 1938 was a Spanish Colonial Revival ten-room, two-story convent and chapel. Next in 1947 came a more modern structure of ten classrooms with a 400-seat auditorium of board-formed concrete. 1953 saw the addition of a two-story rectory — Spanish outside and Midcentury Modern inside — with handsome mahogany paneling throughout. Weber’s final project in Riverside was a solo gig in 1958, adding two wings to the 1938 convent. A “crinkle-crankle” brick wall enclosed portions of the full-block property on all four sides. His photo of the project, taken in 1939, is at the end of this set.

Salvage Sales & Free molding,trim,project wood:
Saturday August 3rd, we will be open at 9am till the last person leaves, we are not open all day, our doors are located at our second site and we open it up to those seeking doors After we lock up at the Weber House, please let us know if your only looking for doors and we’ll as best let you know about what time to arrive!
We are located at 1510 University Ave in the parking lot of the Courtyard Marriott hotel!
Please bring pics and measurements to help best assist your needs!
Dan can be reached at 951-452-2638 cell/text for any questions!

A little bit of local history in the basement of the 🍊🐿️

In Claremont, a historic win for historic preservation with new law After decades of resistance to making historic preservation a law, Claremont finally embraces it. Columnist David Allen recounts why it took so long.

If you’re wondering what the scaffolds at Mission Inn are for, they’re doing roof repairs along Orange and Main Street. Gotta hand it to the hard-working crew out there in this heat!

A peek inside the former Grant Elementary School at 14th & Brockton, designed 1934 by Peter J. Weber for the firm of G. Stanley Wilson. The split-level building exhibits many of Weber’s iconic school elements, including a semi-octagonal library bay, a grand auditorium with exposed beams and trusses, and custom wrought-iron lighting fixtures.

The B&W photo is Weber’s shot from shortly after the school completed construction.

Mission Bridge, Santa Ana River. This was originally the primary entrance to Riverside for those coming by car from Los Angeles or other points north. Photo taken 1924.

It was built in 1923, widened in 1931, damaged in a flood in 1938, and replaced in 1958. Towers remain in place at their original location, now Carlson Dog Park.

West Riverside School
Riverview Drive and Mission Boulevard
1923

A two-wing Mission Revival-style schoolhouse designed by G. Stanley Wilson and Peter J. Weber was built of board-formed poured concrete for the community of West Riverside (now Jurupa Valley). Simply massed, the two wings mirrored each other across an open grassy area, with shaded arcades and steeply-pitched terracotta tile roofs. The bell from the 1889 original adobe schoolhouse was repurposed in a whimsical stone tower, all of nine feet high, with an arched passageway just big enough for a kid to pass through on their way to and from school.

Preserving Riverside’s rich architectural history takes a lot of work, and we need help! Want to get involved? Old Riverside Foundation is actively recruiting volunteers for a variety of tasks: Vintage Home Tour Event Support, Salvage Operations, Weber House Fix-It Days, General Event Support, Advocacy Scout, and manning Outreach Booths at local events.

Please visit https://app.joinit.com/o/old-riverside-foundation/ and click “join us” to sign up as a Volunteer!

Already a member and want to participate? Visit your online membership profile and the same link above and select what tasks you’d like to help with.

Architect G. Stanley Wilson (left) is seen here during a site inspection of the Riverside General Hospital East Wing and Powerhouse/Laundry Additions at Magnolia Boulevard and Harrison Street sometime between 1935 - 1938.

A WPA-funded project, this pair of facilities were designed in a Mediterranean Revival style by Wilson’s lead designer Peter J. Weber, featuring elements of both Italian and Spanish influence. The laundry facility’s imposing rooftop vent and penthouse was punctuated by decorative ceramic screens, and the East Wing featured decorative quoining and a semi-octagonal street-facing façade. Construction began in 1935 but was beset with delays.

These buildings have since been demolished. The location is now occupied by the Lowe’s shopping center and residences behind.

Salvage Sales & Free molding,trim,project wood:
Saturday July 20th, we will be open at 9am till the last person leaves, we are not open all day, our doors are located at our second site and we open it up to those seeking doors After we lock up at the Weber House, please let us know if your only looking for doors and we’ll as best let you know about what time to arrive!
We are located at 1510 University Ave in the parking lot of the Courtyard Marriott hotel!
Please bring pics and measurements to help best assist your needs!
Dan can be reached at 951-452-2638 cell/text for any questions!

Three of Riverside’s greatest early 20th-century architects had a hand in creating Fairlawn, an enduring estate home in Riverside sited on ten acres near Van Buren and Victoria.

G. Stanley Wilson led the Arts & Crafts design of the original home in 1925 with minimal Mediterranean Revival and Beaux-Arts embellishments from his lead designer Peter J. Weber. Once finished, the owner immediately contracted with Henry L. A. Jekel to add two wings with second-story spaces at either end of the home in 1926. Jekel included touches of English Tudor Revival to the already-eclectic mix, almost as if to say “more is more!”

Captions in the photos.

The ill-fated Press Printing & Binding House was designed in 1925 by Henry L. A. Jekel, one of Riverside’s finest proponents of the Spanish Colonial Revival style. It sat adjacent to the Fox Theater and provided printing & bookmaking services for an offshoot company of the Press-Enterprise newspaper.

In 2011, a city-contracted construction crew demolished the rear of the building without proper review, leaving the façade in a condition that could not be saved. All that remains is a decorative stub wall near its original location on Fairmount Boulevard between Mission Inn and Sixth.

Outrage in the local preservation community led the city to create its Historic Preservation Fund in 2016 by way of compensation. Seeded with an initial amount from general funds and supplemented with a portion of the sale of other historic properties the city once owned, the HPF has paid out grants to owners of commercial and residential properties for the last eight years and is nearly depleted. Discussions about the future of the fund are ongoing.

Old Riverside Foundation salvage chair Dan Cocco was onsite at the Museum of Riverside this morning assessing some items for a potential salvage operation that may occur next year. We always appreciate those in the community who reach out to keep vintage items like doors, windows, hardware, and fixtures in use and local to Riverside.

Our salvage operation is continually assessing demolition and renovation work throughout Riverside. Typically every other Saturday, we roll open the garage door at the Weber House to sell these high-quality vintage treasures at fair prices for property owners looking to restore original character. Keep an eye on our posts for the next salvage sale event!

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You know you’re somebody when there’s a Wikipedia page about you!

Rules and guidelines are quite rigid for their standards of “notability,” as are what sources they’ll accept as reference. We got some help from encouraging editors who found Peter J. Weber not just notable, but interesting… and after many months of work, revisions, and review, the article was accepted for publishing today.

Peter J. Weber - Wikipedia Peter Joseph Weber (1893–1983) was an American architect who worked in California from 1906 to 1956. Trained in the beaux arts style and technique, he is known primarily for his Mediterranean Revival work in Riverside, California. Ten of his designs for the firm of G. Stanley Wilson, Architect are...

The heat is on! For the duration of the summer and in to the fall, tours of the Weber House will be available Sunday through Friday between 9:00 am and noon. Schedule your visit online at https://oldriverside.org/the-weber-house/

The Peace Tower on Mount Rubidoux honors Frank Miller, Master of the Mission Inn and dedicated pacifist. It was designed by architect Arthur B. Benton in 1925 and constructed while Miller was away on one of his international jaunts in search of art and artifacts.

ADVOCACY STATEMENT

July 8, 2024

Old Riverside Foundation has been monitoring the unfortunate fracture of the relationship between the Historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa and the non-profit Mission Inn Foundation.

It’s hard to imagine, but the future of the hotel wasn’t always bright. Owners Duane and Kelly Roberts have done a commendable job over the last thirty-two years of keeping the Mission Inn operating and thriving as the vital heart of Riverside. Their dedicated attention, at no small cost, has ensured that the remarkable beauty of the Inn has become the most effective and far-reaching icon for the City of Riverside. The reputation of the Mission Inn is known around the world, and its endurance embodies the best of how Riverside values historic preservation.

Over forty-eight years, the Mission Inn Foundation (a separate non-profit entity) has shone a dedicated supporting spotlight on the hotel, enhancing its services while also serving the community. The Foundation provided an educational museum and volunteer docent-led tours of the hotel, celebrating its history and cultural significance. Their gift shop functioned as a de facto visitor’s center for Downtown Riverside, providing information to residents and out-of-towners alike.

While they are discontinued now, a more permanent loss of those services – the Foundation’s hotel tours in particular – would negatively impact the community, the cause of historic preservation in Riverside, and the city itself. The Foundation’s rigorous volunteer docent-training program, refined over decades, takes over eight months to complete: a measure of dedication and love that befits the status of the Mission Inn, the grand landmark that has been the heart of Riverside for over 120 years. The story of the Mission Inn encompasses the story of Riverside itself, and is one of the most engaging ways to learn about our history.

Old Riverside Foundation is encouraged by the intentions of the Mission Inn Foundation’s new President and Vice President, and we believe they can correct the regrettable and deeply damaging failings of the organization’s previous leadership. The mutually-beneficial relationship between the Historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa and the Mission Inn Foundation can be restored through honest, transparent communication and by the shared dedication of both parties to the community and to the legacy of the Mission Inn.

We encourage their discussions to continue toward that goal.

Dave Stolte
President
Old Riverside Foundation

Advocacy Statement Regarding Mission Inn Foundation – Old Riverside Foundation Old Riverside Foundation has been monitoring the unfortunate fracture of the relationship between the Historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa and the non-profit Mission Inn Foundation.

Lugonia Kindergarten
Lugonia and Orange, Redlands
1937
Design by Peter J. Weber for the firm of G. Stanley Wilson

This Public Works Administration project is a simple and elegant single-story Spanish Colonial Revival building made of board-formed poured concrete. Its entrance features decorative wood carving and an offset breezeway screen. A pilastered semi-octagonal library wing with tall windows extends from the east side, while its southern elevation has an arcaded portico. The school’s cozy auditorium includes an inglenook with the letters of the alphabet in Roman inscription over the fireplace and whimsical ceramic tile details of animals from A to Z on its built-in benches.

The building now functions as an office for the Redlands Unified School District.