Historic Riverside hotel holds many presidential treasures

Riverside’s Mission Inn is a favorite stop of tourists traveling through Southern California. It’s also a popular destination for US Presidents.

Only here, in the historic hotel’s immense and opulent lobby, could an oversized furnishing like the carved wooden “Taft Chair” seem small.

“It was custom made for Taft’s visit here in 1909. Very large — and Taft was a very large man,” says Steve Spiller, curator of the Mission Inn Museum.

William Howard Taft was our 27th and heaviest president, weighing it at about 330 pounds.

“The story is that he was kinda insulted by this rather large chair,” Spiller says with a laugh, “so we don’t know if he, we presume he sat in it, but he didn’t stay overnight. But they did have a banquet.”

Just a few yards away is the Presidential Gallery. It’s actually a cozy bar with an adjacent lounge lined with decidedly sober presidential portraits.

“The area where these paintings hang is called the Presidential Lounge, and it’s called that for Teddy Roosevelt’s visit here in May of 1903, and that’s where he stayed,” says Spiller. “It was actually a two-story suite. Now it’s the bar and lounge of the hotel.”

Roosevelt is also depicted in a more dramatic painting that shows him leading his “Rough Riders” into battle in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. It hangs under gallery lights in the Inn’s upscale steakhouse.

One of the portraits in the Presidential Gallery, though, holds a less heroic place. It hangs apart from the rest, shrouded in half-light: Richard Nixon.

His placement, though, has more to do with the time Nixon spent at the hotel rather than his exit from politics.

“You know there’s a theory about having resigned from office and all that. But I don’t know if that’s true,” explains Spiller. “Actually, I should back up — Nixon was married in the presidential suite.” The entrance to that suite is now the entrance to the hotel’s wood-paneled bar where his portrait hangs.

The Nixons were wed at the hotel 71 years ago, when the future president was still a young attorney.

“They didn’t have a lot of money, so the presidential suite was a cheaper place to get married than in the St. Francis Chapel, which is quite dramatic and special,” says Spiller. “And the story is that the aunt of one of the relatives balanced the wedding cake on their lap as they drove up from Orange County for the wedding.”

Ronald and Nancy Regan honeymooned at the Mission Inn nearly 60 years ago. Here’s a reading from Nancy Reagan’s autobiography about the visit to the famous Riverside hotel:

”The manager had placed a beautiful bouquet of roses in the bridal suite. The next morning before we left, we delivered them to an elderly woman across the hall we had learned was quite ill. It somehow seemed fitting to share our happiness.”

The Mission Inn sat dormant for eight years until Orange County businessman Duane Roberts refurbished it. He invited the Reagans back to the Mission Inn for a gala to celebrate the hotel’s re-opening in 1993.