After 35 years of being seemingly frozen in time, the mid-century facade of the old Imperial Hardware Company store in downtown Riverside is no more. The city, which recently finalized the purchase of the long-shuttered building, began dismantling Imperial’s modern false front early Monday. By midday, nearly three-fourths of the aluminum covering had been removed,…
Last month, one of Southern California’s notable post-war architects, Herman Otto Ruhnau, passed away at the age of 93 in Riverside, a city in which he left a distinctive architectural legacy. A German by descent, Ruhnau was born September 1, 1912, in Santa Barbara, California. Ruhnau would eventually move with his family to Pasadena before…
Can a reborn shopping center inject new life into an older suburban neighborhood? Indeed it can as witnessed with the recently rebuilt Riverside Plaza. Opened as an outdoor shopping plaza in three phases between June 1956 and September 1957 and enclosed during a 1983/84 renovation, Riverside’s first mall-like center has now come full-circle with its…
One of the finest neon signs from Riverside’s post-war past may soon be coming down in the name of progress. The owner of the Thunderbird Lodge located at 2711 University Avenue is in the midst of a $1.3 million overhaul of the atomic-era motel. Sadly, not included within the renovation are plans to keep the…
