Updated:
February 16, 2007
The three principal architects involved in the design of the Mission Inn were Arthur B. Benton, Myron Hunt, and G. Stanley Wilson. Hunt, a native of Massachusetts, attended Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and spent a year in Europe studying its architecture. He worked in Boston before returning to Chicago, where he worked in the office of Henry H. Richardson alongside Frank Lloyd Wright and other architects who were to become very well known. In 1903, Hunt moved to Southern California where he would leave an invaluable architectural legacy, including the campuses of California Institute of Technology, Pomona College, and Occidental College, the Rose Bowl, the Pasadena City Library, the Ambassador Hotel, and the Henry E. Huntington Beaux Arts mansion (part of The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens).
In 1910, Hunt and his partner at the time, Elmer Grey, won first prize in a competition to design Riverside’s First Congregational Church, the church where Frank Miller worshipped and taught Sunday school classes. The tower of the church was designed in an elaborate Spanish Baroque-inspired decoration known as “Churrigueresque.”
Frank Miller hired Myron Hunt in 1913 to design the Spanish Wing of the hotel. The wing included the outdoor dining area called the Spanish Patio, in addition to the Spanish Dining Room, the San Pasqual Kitchen, and the Spanish Art Gallery. The Spanish Art Gallery was reminiscent of many of the grand galleries of Europe with numerous paintings and other objects decorating the room. Hunt had designed an ornate sculpted ceiling for the room, but Miller apparently objected to the cost, and a gold cloth ceiling was substituted.
Myron Hunt was selected as the architect for the permanent structures at March Field, the Army Air Corps’ base east of Riverside. The government reported that the style of the base was to “harmonize with the best traditions of the historical architecture of Southern California, " as noted in the National Register of Historic Places nomination materials for March Field (National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Historic Overview section 8, page 37, n.d.). Work began on the Mission Revival-styled structures in the mid-1920’s, marking both Hunt's and Frank Miller’s profound influence upon architecture in the region. |
