Two iconic downtown Riverside buildings turn 50
When gazing upon the skyline of downtown Riverside from atop Mount Rubidoux, two office buildings tend to stand out: Riverside County Administrative Center (the “glass box” and city’s tallest building) and Riverside City Hall (seven-story, chocolate brown building with low-slung arches). Both buildings were designed by the Riverside-based architectural firm founded by Herman O. Ruhnau. And both marked their 50th year in 2025.
Founded in 1950, Ruhnau’s firm became Ruhnau, Evans, Brown, & Steinmann in 1962. At that time, the firm included Ruhnau and principals Arthur “Art” Clair Evans (1921-2006), Robert Elmer Brown Jr. (1925-1989), and Eugen Kurt Steinmann (1927-2017; aka Eugene/E. Kurt Steinmann). Changes through the years would modify the firm’s name somewhat, with the firm marking its 75th year in 2025 as Ruhnau Clarke Architects.
Among the many and various projects in Riverside designed by Ruhnau’s firm, three in particular are likely the most prominent: the original Main Street Pedestrian Mall (1966); and two of the city’s most prominent downtown buildings: Riverside City Hall (1975) and Riverside County Administrative Center (1975) – the latter two of which are highlighted below.
Riverside City Hall (1975)
Although designs for a possible new City Hall from Ruhnau reach back as far as 1950, Ruhnau’s firm was awarded the contract to design the current City Hall in October 1966, winning out over two other entities: a combination effort by Riverside architectural firm of Moise & Harbach with Los Angeles architect William Pereria; and, an alliance of Riverside architects Robert E. Brown and Clinton Marr.
At the time of the 1966 design contract — as Ruhnau, Evans, & Steinmann — neither a site nor architectural style had yet been selected for the new City Hall that would replace the 1924-era, Spanish Renaissance Revival flavored “old” City Hall — which still stands today on the southwest corner of Mission Inn Avenue and Orange streets. As such, it would be several years until a final site was selected and designs were completed — and approved — before groundbreaking would take place in February 1973. And by the time of a cornerstone ceremony was held in October 1973, the steel frame shape of the new City Hall was already present. Finally, all would culminate with a public dedication and opening of the new City Hall on October 6, 1975.
However, the iconic design seen today is not what was originally proposed.
When initially unveiled in November 1970, the design for City Hall was that of a very modern, 9-story structure consisting of off-set levels with alternating layers of wraparound balconies and recessed windows. Also included was a breezeway over the pedestrian mall. The relatively attractive design — with elements of Brutalism and New Formalism — looked and felt like a civic building of the time period. And although a fine design in its own right and having initially gained City approval, the exterior design was quickly modified:
When architect Herman Ruhnau was commissioned to design a new City Hall for Riverside in the early 1970s, his initial vision was of a sleek white concrete and recessed-glass building whose six-stories rose like alternating layers of vanilla cake with chocolate filling.
“Then we heard the cry: ‘We want arches.'”
Riverside Press-Enterprise – April 1, 1984
The exterior redesign, primarily credited to lead designer Steinmann, gave the structure a very unique look, one still of Brutalist form with New Formalism elements, but softer and warmer via the use of brown Norman bricks and stylized, low-slung arches with cutaway corners that provided a bit of Frank Lloyd Wright influence. It also better reflected a bit of early Riverside’s Mission- and and Spanish-influenced architecture.
In fact, back in August 1971, when the new design was unveiled, Ruhnau referred to it as reflecting “the city’s heritage of grace, beauty, and the blending of the old with the new” and will “stand in friendship with the County Courthouse and echo the flavor of the Mission Inn …”
Part of that “new” included a stylized, Asian-influenced version of the City’s raincross symbol that was stamped into the lower cantilevered beams. According to Jennifer Mermilliod and Philip Falcone in their book — City Hall 50 (2025) — the updated design was based upon a version that appeared in a late-1960s General Plan for Riverside produced by Livingston & Blayney.
Although situated in the same spot, the exterior redesign of the building reduced the structure to seven stories (plus basement), but retained the helipad, wraparound balconies, breezeway, pre-existing fountain clock, and adjacent subterranean parking garage (that was expertly hidden). The interior design incorporated a highly-flexible, “open landscape” floor plan with minimal walls and movable partitions on the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors for future expansion (while still maintaining the covered arch, wraparound balconies of at least five feet). According Mermilliod and Falcone (City Hall 50), such expansion took place on the fifth and seventh floors during the 1990s.
As part of the Riverside Renaissance Initiative approved in 2005, the original second floor cafe was relocated to the ground floor along with extensive interior renovation (with new office furniture and fixtures) and minor exterior changes (mostly consisting of window replacement in the original cafe area and removal of wood plank railings along the exterior walkways).
In 2008, the seventh-floor patio area outside the Mayor’s office was re-made and renamed the Grier Pavilion in honor of longtime civic leaders Barnett and Eleanor Jean Grier. The pavilion incorporates a solar panel roof with illuminated white sails that also help provide additional shade during the daytime.
Also in 2008, the pedestrian mall breezeway was completely renovated during the Riverside Renaissance using designs from local landscape architect Ian Davidson. Gone was the bandstand (replaced with a new one in a different spot) and the 17-foot high, cadmium red-colored Riverside Tripod by artist James Rosati (replanted at Fire Station No. 5 on Arlington Avenue). Also gone was much of the original, 1966-era pedestrian mall designs by the Ruhnau firm and noted landscape architects Eckbo, Dean, Austin & Williams (EDAW). The primary exception was the fountain clock, which — though reconfigured during City Hall’s construction and since completely refurbished — still retains most of its original mid-1960s design.
In 2013, an effort to name City Hall after Riverside’s longest-serving mayor, Ronald O. Loveridge, resulted in a compromise with instead naming the pedestrian mall breezeway in his honor. Loveridge began his 33 years of elected office in 1979 as the Ward 1 representative on the City Council. In 1994, he was elected as mayor, serving in that position until 2012.
As part of the 50th anniversary of City Hall, a new art sculpture — a 12-foot high, burnt orange-colored, metal raincross — was placed near Main at Ninth streets. The design uses the modern-stylized version of the raincross that was stamped on the lower beams of City Hall. In addition, on July 15, 2025, City Hall itself was designated as City of Riverside Landmark No. 152, helping to protect for future generations one of the most important — and most unique looking — buildings within Riverside’s skyline.
Riverside County Administrative Center (1975)
Rising almost concurrently in 1973-75 as Riverside’s new City Hall, was the County of Riverside’s own version of a city hall, which also took several years of planning — and a couple major changes — before coming to full fruition in 1975. Their simultaneous construction was due in part to a joint powers financing agency (aka Riverside Civic Center Authority) created between the City and County for constructing their respective buildings as well as an exhibit hall (Ben H. Lewis Hall — the original version of today’s updated and expanded convention center). Also included — but never built — was a planned performing arts venue adjacent to the eventual exhibit hall.
However, unlike Riverside’s City Hall, Riverside County’s Administrative Center was completed in two very distinct phases (with a third major addition in 2002).
Initial plans for the County Admin complex we see today — bounded by Lemon, Tenth, Lime, and Twelfth streets — began in the early 1950s during the County’s initial Post War boom. Originally referred to as the Hall of Records building, it would go through a few different incarnations, locations, and financing options over several years before finally receiving County approval for phase one in December 1964.
Start of construction on the first phase began in August 1965 with completion almost two years later in May 1967. General Contractor for the first phase was James I. Barnes Construction Company of Claremont, California.
When completed, the bunker-styled pedestal — consisting of a basement and two upper levels — was designed for two purposes: first, to house some County departments plus an underground emergency operations center (using a $600,000 grant from the federal Civil Defense agency); and second, as a foundation for an eight-story office tower (phase two) to centralize various other County departments mostly scattered about downtown Riverside. Phase one also included an underground tunnel connecting to the then-recently built County Health-Finance building across Lemon Street at Eleventh.
Yet, a funny thing happened during the time between the planning for the pedestal in the mid-1960s and the eventual addition of the office tower in the mid-1970s: the County realized an even greater need for office space would be necessitated by 1980. Thus, what originally was to be a building consisting of 10 above-ground floors (plus basement), ended up as 13 above-ground floors (plus basement). (Note: Though officially with 13 above-ground floors — plus basement — the number of stories for the building has often been erroneously reported as 14 stories on account the building’s elevators and directories show a floor 12 and a floor 14 — omitting any reference to a floor 13.)
As such, the additional three floors required a major change to the exterior:
The first phase, the concrete base — it looks like a bunker precisely because it was designed and built to withstand nuclear fallout and blast — was completed in the late 1960s … But before the tower could be erected a few years later, Ruhnau says county officials asked for an additional two or three stories.
“We had only designed the foundation to hold 10 stories,” he explains, “and the only way we could add the extra space was to redo the foundation, which was impossible, or to find some light building material that the foundation could hold.”
Mirrored glass became the answer.
Riverside Press-Enterprise – April 1, 1984
Approval of the glass tower addition took place in December 1971, with a contract awarded to Gust K. Newberg Construction Company of Los Angeles in February 1973. Newberg’s winning bid of $7,216,000 was slightly under the $7.5 million estimate by the Ruhnau firm. (As a sidenote, Newberg had also recently won the City Hall construction contract in October 1972.)
Bonds financing the construction were sold in March 1973 to Bank of America, which came in with the lowest interest rate of 5.3615 percent. And with no apparent official groundbreaking ceremony, construction began shortly thereafter with notable progress visualized in an October 1973 newspaper photo. By early 1974, the building was officially renamed Riverside County Administrative Center (a name still in use today).
Construction was mostly completed by mid-1975, with relocation into the new tower for some County departments beginning on June 2, 1975. Other departments followed until by late August 1975, the Board of Supervisors relocated from the County Courthouse into their new quarters atop the shiny glass tower. An official public dedication for the building was held nearly a year later in June 1976.
The new building included a 150-seat board chamber that, according to County Supervisor Norton Younglove at the time, was the fifth such chamber used by County supervisors since the formation of Riverside County in 1893. For the County’s first 11 years, Norton stated, the supervisors used the since-demolished Arlington/Tetley Hotel before utilizing three different chambers within the County Courthouse between 1904 and 1975. (Note: A sixth chamber would come into use following a 2002 expansion; see below.)
One notable incident that took place in the building’s early months was a week-long power shortage in December 1975 that affected various aspects of the building, primarily within the top 10 floors. It was determined that a major power circuit for the building had shorted out, leaving parts of the glass box with no working ventilation system and minimal power. The result was semi-darkness for some departments for several days until workarounds and newly made parts from the manufacturer could arrive and be installed.
In September 1999, the Board of Supervisors approved obtaining detailed plans for expanding the downtown Administrative Center. Initially described as an 80,000 square-foot, four-story expansion, revised plans approved in May 2001 were for a 96,000 square-foot, five-story expansion attached to the western elevation of the current building.
Designed by the Ruhnau firm and completed in late 2002, the glass-walled, semi-circular annex included a 286-seat board chamber on the ground floor — for easier public access versus the previous 14th floor chamber — with a 35-seat dais equipped with computers and video conferencing capabilities. Also built as part of the expansion was an adjacent, three-level, 751-space parking structure. Total cost came to $32.45 million, up from an original September 1999 estimate of $18.9 million for the four-story version without earthquake strengthening of the existing elevator tower and a smaller parking structure. (By comparison, newspaper reports had the original pedestal foundation costing $3 million when completed in 1967 and the glass tower addition at $7.5 million in 1975.)
A few months prior to completion, a Riverside Press-Enterprise article described the annex as one that countered — and yet, complimented — the existing glass tower:
The airy, open atmosphere counters the heavy feel of the County Administrative Center, a boxy high rise with a narrow entryway, low ceilings and sluggish elevators.
And yet the circular shape of the annex, designed by Ruhnau Ruhnau Clarke Associates of Riverside, connects with the old in form and texture.
Both buildings are simple geometric shapes. Both feature blue-glass panels as their dominant facade. The curved, glass panels of the annex now shimmer in the sun, reflecting distorted images of neighboring structures like an Impressionist painting.
Riverside Press-Enterprise – August 26, 2002
Though over the years it has faced some semi-harsh criticism — mostly for being boxy and bland — in many respects, the building’s exterior has aged well in a semi-timeless sense as its design could very well place it anywhere within the 1950s to the 1990s. And a $2 million energy efficient project in 1997 that replaced all 3,000 windowpanes (and added color texture by using darker panes on the building’s corners), coupled with the 2002 semi-circular expansion, has given the building more flavor than when originally completed in 1975.
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- RaincrossSquare – Herman Ruhnau, AIA (July 2006)
Related
Sources: “City Hall 50 — Building a City Beautiful” (2025; Jennifer Mermilliod and Philip Falcone), RaincrossSquare.com, Ruhnau Clarke Architects, Legacy.com, Ancestry.com, FindAGrave.com, Pacific Coast Architecture Database (PCAD), Riverside Press-Enterprise (RE-19500827, RDP-19510413, DE-19571004, RDP-19590212, RDP-19600325, DE-19641208, PE-19650801, RP-19650609, PE-19650801, RP-19660810, DE-19661026, DE-19670429, DE-19670509, PE-19670916, RP-19680213, RP-19701110, RP-19710601, DE-19710818, RP-19710825, RP-19711216, RP-19720809, RP-19721025, DE-19730214, RP-19730221, RP-19730328, RP-19730829, DE-1973103, RP-19731004, DE-19731022, RP-19740118, RP-19750603, DE-19750827, RP-19750922, RP-19750924, PE-19751005, RP-19751219, PE-19751225, RP-19760629, PE-19970712, PE-19990908, PE-20000216, PE-20010328, PE-20010516, PE-20020826, PE-20021212)
