January 2014 Volume 1 Issue 1
Riverside's Main Street, An Historical Perspective
A City Transformed: Riverside's Renaissance
Chef Joshus Juarez Colorful Cusine Paints Main Street Nightlife
Something Sweet By Serina, Sugar 'n Spice 'n Everything Nice
Vintage postcards from the Collection of Steve Lech
Riverside's Main Street
An Historical Perspective
Special to the IEE
By Steve Lech
Main Street.
The name seems to say it all. It is (usually) the main thoroughfare of a given town, where businesses, public entities, and other uses come together to make up the core of the city. Although Riverside’s Main Street seems nowadays to be only a side street, it’s history shows otherwise.
When Riverside was originally laid out in 1870, it was done in a mile-square grid pattern that was very typical of new towns at the time. Streets running east to west were numbered 1 through 14. The cross streets
running north-south were mostly named for trees. This was a way of advertising that was adopted by many towns in Southern California at a time when these towns were trying to lure investment from back east, when easterners believed most of the United States west of the Rockies was one large, vast desert. By naming streets for trees, such as Pine, Orange, Lemon, Lime, Redwood, etc., it gave the investors a belief that those types of trees could be grown here, and grow here they did.
What differentiated Riverside was the fact that it really had four “main” streets – Main and Market Streets running north-south, and 7th and 8th Streets running east-west. On the block bordered by each of these streets was to be a public “plaza” or park (this would later be moved to 9th and Market – the present White Park).
Very early on, businesses began to locate along Main Street between about 5th and 9th Streets. These were typical businesses of the time, including general stores and small hotels. Most of the rest of downtown developed with houses and various agricultural uses.
By the 1880s, though, Riverside began to grow tremendously. The Navel Orange
was making its debut on the market, and a great amount of wealth was coming in to Riverside and would stay through the “citrus heyday,” which ended after World War II. This new-found wealth would transform downtown Riverside, especially Main Street. Where small wooden buildings and boardwalks once were the norm, large, ornate brick and concrete structures began taking their place. By the turn of the 20th century, downtown Riverside was a business and tourism center, and Main Street hosted many of the local businesses that would characterize the city for years.
A few of the long-time businesses that located along or just off of Main Street still hold memories for long-time Riversiders Rouse's Department Store started as a small general store in the 1890s by Gaylor Rouse, grew into a major department store by the 1910s. Located on the east side of Main street between 8th and 9th, Rouse's was a full-
service store that offered not only apparel but also housewares, linens, and other items for the house. Rouse’s was a very popular store for many years.
In the mid-1920s, Gaylor Rouse hired local architect G. Stanley Wilson to completely transform the façade of his building, and that façade, moderately modified, still exists at UCR’s Culver Center for the arts, which is the newest incarnation for the building.
Similarly, Franzen’s Hardware, on the east side of Main Street between 7th and 8th, offered hardware, “crockery,” and appliances. Franzen’s was another business that started early (1900) and lasted through the 1930s. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the business in January, 1935, and at that time the business rebuilt under a new name, Westbrook’s. Westbrook’s fabulous Art Deco building façade, which was recently “rediscovered”
after having been under a 1950’s metal façade, evokes an era of hope springing from the 1930s depression years.
Westbrook’s building, while sitting empty now, may get a renaissance in the coming years.
Main Street also gained fame for being the crossroad for the early version of Highway 60. Beginning in the 1890s, there was a sort of tug-of-war between 7th Street and 8th Street for the main highway through Riverside. Two factions were at play here. The first centered around the 7th Street interests, which included Frank Miller and the Mission Inn, along with several public institutions (namely the library, city hall, post office, churches, and the municipal auditorium). The other series of interests lay mainly in the two large, ornate banking institutions that were housed at the corner of Main and 8th. These were the Evans Building on the northeast corner, and the Castleman Building on the southeast.
This tug-of-war eventually galvanized itself into a situation where both streets became the main thoroughfare. If a visitor came to Riverside from the west, or wanted to depart Riverside in that direction, he had to go along 7th Street, which eventually took people into Los Angeles. However, if the visitor wanted to leave Riverside heading east, he had to take a one-block jog to the south and turn east on 8th Street, which eventually led up the Box Springs Grade and on towards the desert. Because of this, the business hub of Main Street was truly on the block between 7th and 8th, but extended further than that in both directions.
Throughout Riverside’s history as a citrus-producing city, Main Street served as the hub of local business, entertainment, and social gatherings. Naturally there were businesses throughout downtown, but Main Street served as the center. This began to change in post-war Riverside, just as in many cities in the region. With World War II in the rear-view mirror, Americans abandoned the years of depression and rationing for a new life that included more automobiles, more shorter trips for vacationing, and less “wintering” to escape the inclement weather. Naturally there were businesses throughout downtown, but Main Street served as the center. Riverside became swept up in a wave of suburbanization that led to the decentralizing of cities as more and more people moved from the inner-city core of a town for individual, single-family homes in the suburbs. In Riverside, this meant fewer and fewer orange groves, and the land upon which
those groves sat became increasingly valuable for home development. As such the focus of Riverside changed drastic-
ally over the ensuing years people moved out of downtown, and with them followed businesses to the new shopping areas
of Magnolia Center (1920s-1950), the Brockton Arcade (circa 1954), the Riverside Plaza (1956-57), and the Tyler Mall (1970).
This shift away from a main city core meant that businesses along Main Street and elsewhere downtown began to see declines in sales that few could survive. Several businesses opted to move to one or more of the suburban shopping locations (Sweet’s Mens’ Store, See’s Candy, Montgomery Ward’s, and Woolworth’s), while others simply gave up and closed their doors for good (Rouse’s and Westbrook’s to name a few).
By the 1970s, Main Street was anything but empty storefronts, a perceived high crime rate, and several other factors kept shoppers from downtown. To try to stem the tide of disappearing businesses, in 1966, the city converted Main Street between 6th and 10th Streets into a pedestrian walking mall. This served to hasten the decline of downtown and Main Street. In fact, downtown was pretty much left to the government workers who inhabited City Hall or the County’s new County Administrative Center at 11th and Lemon. The Mission Inn, long a mainstay of both Main Street and downtown, was rapidly spirally into disrepair, so much so
so much so that many residents questioned why Riverside needed to keep the old hotel standing in light of its lack of upkeep and constant red-inked balance sheets.
Luckily for Riversiders of today, the Mission Inn did survive, and in 1985, was closed for what became a seven and a half year renovation and closure. Riversiders rallied around the old hotel, and saw it as a way to revitalize what was at that time little more than a ghost town. Once the Mission Inn reopened completely in 1993, businesses returned as did people, and now Main Street, despite still being a pedestrian walkway, has seen a resurgence of people and businesses.