Architect Julia Morgan, who died in 1957, was born 150 years ago this month. She designed one building in the IE: Riverside’s YWCA, now the Riverside Art Museum. I take a tour and find out how the building came to be, which included standing up to Mission Inn owner Frank Miller, for Sunday’s column.
Monthly Archives: January 2022
Column: Work hard, play hard was attitude at Kaiser Steel
An ex-Kaiser Steel worker recalls the great pay and the great dives around Fontana to spend it at. He offers a window into a vanished era in my Friday column, which also has a few items from around the Empire.
Column: City of Trees is shaken by windstorm
Claremont got clobbered by the weekend’s winds. I survey the damage in Wednesday’s column.
Column: Fossilized gas station fuels the imagination
Have you heard about, or seen photos of, the new California Air Resources Board’s SoCal headquarters in Riverside? Its courtyard sculpture is of a gas station’s pumps in high decay, as if they’ve become fossils. It’s a thought-provoking look at our future. I visited for Sunday’s column.
Column: Assertive San Bernardino council takes ax to mayor’s pay
I attend my third straight San Bernardino City Council meeting, and how could I not? They were going to discuss chopping by mayor’s salary by more than half. And they did. Not often you get to witness something like that. Or read about it, as you can do in my Friday column.
Column: 1960s Lytton Savings in Pomona draws fresh interest
A former savings and loan in downtown Pomona, and its towering pole sign, is the subject of my Wednesday column. This had seemed worthy of a “brIEfly” paragraph at the end of a column when I made an inquiry for information, but the idea expanded, as ideas sometimes do.
Column: Didion’s famous essay trained eye on secluded street
Joan Didion’s “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” essay, about the Lucille Miller murder trial of 1965, was about the Inland Empire and set partly on Alta Loma’s Bella Vista Drive. I visit to talk to a longtime homeowner, and also excerpt comments from readers about my recent column on Didion, who died last month, all for Sunday’s column.
Column: Casa Blanca Hotel was an earlier Ontario teardown
Following up on the recent fire that gutted Ontario’s city-owned Fallis House, I write about the old Casa Blanca Hotel, which it turns out once stood across the street. It too fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1998. History is fragile, folks! That’s the subject of my Friday column.
Column: Bright side to the pandemic: more reading time
I take my annual look back at my reading life of the previous year in Wednesday’s column. For anyone keeping track, the word “tsundoku” makes its almost obligatory appearance.
Column: Survey says: Everyone thinks they live in the Inland Empire
Did you see our Dec. 26 (print) story on the boundaries of the Inland Empire? We’d done a survey on what readers think they are and presented the results, some of which were a surprise. I dig into them and pull out some that particularly struck me for Sunday’s column.