Mission Inn Museum

The Mission Inn Foundation was incorporated in 1976 to assist in the preservation and restoration of the Mission Inn, and originally, to assist in managing the hotel during ownership by the City of Riverside. The Mission Inn hotel is now privately owned by Mr. Duane Roberts, and the Foundation has a unique role of operating a non-profit museum within an operating for-profit hotel.

The Mission Inn Museum was opened in 1993, simultaneous with the reopening of the Mission Inn hotel after extensive renovations. The museum’s collection is significant in demonstrating the epic periods of Mission Inn development. Frank Miller, the original owner and developer of the Inn, was an early proponent of the Mission Revival movement, an avid collector of art from around the world, an original thinker, a marketing genius, and a strong community booster. Miller’s central role in the development of Riverside and the forging of a community identity gives the museum a broad range of suitable interpretive topics.

The story of the National Historic Landmark Mission Inn stretches over more than a century and began with the Miller family. In 1874 Civil Engineer C.C. Miller arrived in Riverside, began work on a water system and was paid with a parcel of land in the center of the new town where the family started a hotel. His son, Frank Augustus Miller, later bought the property, improved and enlarged it, and by 1903 opened the first wing of the current Mission Inn building. The building grew in several stages and now fills an entire block with gardens and towers, arches and stairways. Throughout the site, visitors are able to view paintings, sculpture and furnishings from the Mission Inn collections.

The Mission Inn Museum maintains an excellent reference library on subject ranging from local history to mission architecture.