Old Riverside Foundation is pleased to announce the date of our 21st Annual Vintage Home Tour. More information about this year’s beautiful homes and the historic Riverside area highlighted in the tour will be available here as it becomes available.

See payment options on the Twelfth Night Page – Click Here.

Not a Member?  Not a Problem!  Come and sign up on-site.  Hope you can make it!

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The Mission Inn Historic District

The Westbrook/Imperial Hardware Building

The Mission Inn Annex

The Marcy Branch Library

The Farmhouse Motel

The Stalder Building

Trujillo Adobe

Riverside Downtown Main Branch Library

Fire Station No. 1 (Central Fire Station)

The Press Enterprise Building

More to come on these buildings in the coming months…

The proposed Project involves the demolition of the existing Downtown Main Library as well as removal of the existing open space plaza located in front of the library.  A new and expanded Downtown Main Library anticipated at approximately 100,000 square feet will replace the existing Downtown Main Library building, parking, and entry plaza area.  The planned architectural style will be consistent with the development standards and design policies contained within the Downtown Specific Plan as well as compliment the Mission Inn and Seventh Street Historic Districts.  Furthermore, the building will be designed to LEED certifiable standards.  The existing surface parking lot that wraps around three sides of the building will be removed; new parking will be built on the northeast corner of the site “behind” the new building.  An underground parking structure will be constructed as part of the proposed Project.  A total of 300-400 spaces will be provided of which 100 will be provided within the street level surface parking area.  The Chinese Pavilion, the Unitarian Universalist Church, and its parsonage, that all currently occupy the same block as the Downtown Main Library, will remain in situ.

The good news is that the City has already acknowledged that the Library is historic.  The Notice of Preparation indicates that the Library is eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources under Criterion 3 (architectural significance) at the local level, because it is one of a few good examples of New Formalism.

Quick explanation:  New Formalism is a Mid-Century Modern architectural style that came into vogue in the 1960s.  Instead of abandoning traditional form and decoration like Modern architects did in the 1920s-1950s, the architects of New Formalism brought traditional form back, but with a modern twist.  Symmetry returned to the building plan, and the mass was raised up on a dais like an ancient temple on a hill.  Traditional building elements like colonnades and cornices returned, but in abstract shapes with unadorned surfaces.  And architects resumed decorating buildings, but in a more conceptual, less representational way.  The Main Branch Library has  all the hallmarks of New Formalism – symmetrical plan, raised up on a platform, a large roof slab resembling a cornice, and decorative wall screens depicting an abstract arrangement of doves.

The Old Riverside Foundation will be preparing comments that address scoping of the draft Environmental Impact Report.  We’re interested in seeing alternatives to demolition.  A link to the Notice of Preparation is forthcoming.  You can send your own comments regarding the scoping of the Environmental Impact Report to the City via Principal Planner Diane Jenkins (DiJenkins@riversideca.gov, be sure to CC us) or you can send comments to us for review and possible incorporation into our comments to the City.  As always, be sure to let your Councilperson know that you care about the existing library and want to see it saved and expanded rather than destroyed.  There’s also a place to let the Library design team know what you want to see here: http://www.riversideca.gov/library/Project_library.asp

Ultimately, the fate of the existing Main Branch Library rests upon a groundswell of support from the community.

Here is a recent picture of the Westbrook/Imperial Hardware Building.  You don’t get much more quintessential Main Street than this.

Seriously, you can practically see Mom and Pop heading inside for a wheelbarrow.  Why on earth would our City think about destroying such a clear Main Street landmark?  And who would be paying for its destruction?

Furthermore, there is a re-use vision that has been circulating since 2001 that was drafted by our own State Historic Preservation Officer, Milford Wayne Donaldson, F.A.I.A.  This is not some white elephant that has no chance for re-use – Donaldson managed to craft a rehabilitation/reuse of the building that provided the maximum Floor to Area Ratio allowed in the Downtown Specific Plan.  Can you get any more appropriate than that?

Kudos to the Redevelopment Agency for removing the 1960s metal façade in 2007, but what has happened since?  Isn’t a great Art Deco hardware store on Main Street good enough to save?  We don’t have an unlimited supply of buildings like the Westbrook/Imperial Hardware building. Take a walk downtown and see how many Art Deco buildings you can count that we have left.  We as the public have had to ask questions that are related to the scope of this Environmental Impact Report, which will cost thousands of dollars in consultant fees and create further investment in favor of demolition.  Unfortunately, the most appropriate question will probably go unanswered – Why are we even considering the needless destruction of a downtown landmark?

Are you concerned?  You can do something.  The draft Environmental Impact Report will be out within a few months and once it hits the streets you can read and comment on the study.  On a more general note, you can email your councilperson (and CC Ward 1 councilman Mike Gardner too if he isn’t yours) and share your support for saving the Westbrook-Imperial Hardware building.  This should be a study for reuse, the way we all envisioned in the Downtown Specific Plan.  The head preservationist for California showed us that it is possible – how could we stand and watch more Main Street heritage destroyed?

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In a well-attended (if sweltering) special event, the Riverside Community College District has unveiled the still-gorgeous Churrigueresque facade of the Citrus Belt Savings & Loan Building.  The original building was constructed in 1926 by well-known Los Angeles architect Stiles Clements.  Clements designed numerous landmarks in LA, including the Wiltern and El Capitan theatres, and this building appears to have been his only design in Riverside.  Entombed beneath a mid-century modern curtain wall since 1961, the original building was all but forgotten until recently.  It might have been consigned to the wrecking ball had it not been for the dedication of a few people who understood the potential for greatness that lay beneath that ho-hum curtain wall.

In around 1995, the City of Riverside Planning department received a letter from a past CBS&L bank president that the facade was potentially intact, and with this knowledge the City’s Historic Preservation staff worked diligently over the years to keep it from harm and ascertain the truth of this claim.  At one point they were able to get a hole punched in the stucco of the curtain wall so that the cast concrete face of Clements’ creation could see (and be seen by) the world.

After a long process, RCCD took the bold and commendable step of incorporating restoration and reuse of the building into their plans for the Culinary School and Center for the Arts site.  Up until a week ago when demolition work began, nobody was 100% clear on what still existed behind the curtain wall.  But as the bricks and stucco came tumbling down the beauty of the building began to shine through.  It could barely be contained behind the black curtain placed before it in preparation for the big reveal.

And it looks good!  Yes, some items appear to have been sheared off (including the pair of figures looking out over the arch) to make room for the curtain wall, the windows will need TLC, and there is still some brick and stucco to remove, but the beauty of Clements design just radiates.  PRESERVATION WIN!

The building will become the RCC Center For Social Justice & Civil Liberties, housing a collection of Mine Okubo’s art and providing gallery/archival space for other important collections.  This remarkable reveal demonstrates how incredible beauty can be created in our community when there is the drive and political will to preserve our historic treasures.  Kudos RCCD!