The Mission Inn, now known as The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, is a historic landmark hotel in downtown Riverside, California. Although a composite of many architectural styles, it is generally considered the largest Mission Revival Style building in the United States.  I’ve been to the Inn once before for it’s famous Christmas Festival Of  Lights. However, my intention for this trip was to also visit the Historic Fox Theater which was showing a screening of Gone With the Wind.  Fox Theater Riverside has the distinction of being the same theater Gone with the Wind was screened in pre-release and pre-premier in Atlanta, Georgia.

The property began as a two-story, 12-room adobe boarding house called the "Glenwood Cottage" built by civil engineer Christopher Columbus Miller in 1876. In 1902, Miller's son Frank changed the name to the "Mission Inn" and started building obsessively, in a wild variety of shapes, until he died in 1935.
Miller's vision for the eclectic structure was drawn from many historical design periods, revivals, influences, and styles. Some are Spanish Gothic architecture, Mission Revival Style architecture, Moorish Revival architecture, Spanish Colonial style architecture Spanish Colonial Revival Style architecture, Renaissance Revival architecture, and Mediterranean Revival Style architecture. With one section over another, addition upon addition, the result is an enormously complicated and intricately built structure, comparable to the Winchester House. It contains narrow passageways, exterior arcades, a medieval-style clock, a five-story rotunda, numerous patios and windows, castle towers, minarets, a Cloister Wing (with Catacombs), flying buttresses, Mediterranean domes and a pedestrian skybridge among many other features.
Part of the complexity is an unexpected change of scale as Miller tailored certain portions of the property for his short sister. Another reason for the complexity is the variety of architectural styles.
During the 30 year construction period Miller traveled the world, collecting treasures to bring back to the hotel for display. The various museum-quality artifacts on the property has an estimated value of over $5 million.

The St. Francis Chapel houses four large, stained-glass windows and two original mosaics by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The Mexican-Baroque styled "Rayas Altar" is 25 feet tall by 16 feet across, carved from cedar and completely covered in gold leaf. For his "Garden of Bells," Miller collected over 800 bells, including one dating from the year 1274 described as the "oldest bell in Christendom."

In 1932, Frank Miller opened the St. Francis Atrio containing the "Famous Fliers’ Wall," which was used to recognize notable aviators. On March 20, 1942, WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker was honored at the Inn, becoming the fifty-seventh flier added to the monument. Today, 151 fliers or groups of fliers are honored by having their signatures etched onto ten-inch wide copper wings attached to the wall.

Frank Miller died in 1935 and the Inn continued under the management of his daughter and son-in-law, Allis and DeWitt Hutchings, who died in 1952 and 1953 respectively. The Inn then went through a series of ownership changes and some of its older rooms were converted to apartments.

The hotel was later acquired by the Carley Capital Group and was closed for renovations in 1985 at a cost of $55 million. Newly discovered structural problems cost more than expected and caused the company to fall behind on loan payments to a New York bank. In December 1992, the Inn was sold to Duane R. Roberts, a Riverside businessman and lover of the Inn. Roberts completed the renovations and it was reopened to the public shortly thereafter.

For 125 years it has been the center of Riverside, host to a number of seasonal and holiday functions, as well as occasional political functions and other major social gatherings. Pat and Richard Nixon were married at one of the two wedding chapels, Nancy and Ronald Reagan honeymooned there, and eight other US Presidents have visited the Inn: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and George W. Bush.

Social leaders that have stopped at the Mission Inn include Susan B. Anthony, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Collis and Henry Huntington, Albert Einstein, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Hubert H. Bancrot, Harry Chandler, Booker T. Washington, Helen Keller and John Muir.
The list of entertainers who have toured the Inn is extensive; Lillian Russell, Sarah Bernhardt and Harry Houdini were early visitors to Frank Miller’s hotel. Other guests have included actors such as Ethel Barrymore, Charles Boyer, Eddie Cantor, Mary Pickford, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis (who was married at the Inn in 1945), W. C. Fields, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Fess Parker, James Brolin and Barbra Streisand Raquel Welch and Drew Barrymore. Comedians and musical entertainers such as Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard and Tears for Fears have stopped by.

The Inn continues to be a getaway for notable individuals to this day; Arnold Schwarzenegger has stayed there during his tenure as Governor of California and the Osbournes have also paid a visit in the past few years