Santa Paula Hospice Home Tour features Glen Tavern Inn

Santa Paula Hospice Home Tour

by Judy Triem

The 27th Annual Santa Clara Valley Hospice Home Tour will be held May 15th from 10 am to 4 pm. The historic Glen Tavern Inn, located at 134 N. Mill Street, will be featured on the tour and will host the ice cream sundaes, plant sale and “art on the lawn.”

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Glen Tavern Inn is also a Ventura County and Santa Paula landmark. Its significance lies in both its architecture and history. Designed in 1910 in the English Tudor/Craftsman style by prominent Los Angeles architects Sumner P. Hunt and Silas R. Burns, the building was completed in 1911. Its prominent Tudor characteristics include the half-timbered stucco facade under the steep pitched gables  on the front of this shingled three-story building. Massive sandstone columns support the impressive front entry with its porte cochere.

The interior lobby and stairwell are pure Craftsman in design with the rich wood wainscoting, boxed beams, heavy wood columns and hanging Mission style lamp fixtures, massive stone fireplace and window seats.

Hunt and Burns were considered among the leading architectural firms in Los Angeles during the 1910s and 1920s. Among their best known works are the the Southwest Museum (1914), the Wilshire Country Club (1922), the Southern California Automobile Club (1922-23) and the Ebell Club on Wilshire Boulevard in 1924. In Santa Paula their notable other buildings include the Ebell Club/Santa Paula Theater Center, also listed on the National Register, and the Allan McKevett residence at 829 E. Santa Paula Street.

Historically important as the only unaltered operating hotel remaining in Ventura County from the days of the “grand hotels” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the hotel was built for the Santa Paula Hotel Company, a corporation comprised of prominent local businessmen. Built conveniently near the railroad depot and one block from Main Street, the hotel attracted businessmen from the oil and citrus industry as well as tourists who came to Santa Paula to sample the healing waters of Sulphur Mountain Hot Springs. Silent movie companies working in the area also found rooms in the hotel, including Warner Brothers whose star, the canine Rin Tin Tin, supposedly had his own room during the mid-1920s.

A number of famous people frequented the Inn from time to time. The world renowned Polish pianist, composer and statesman, Ignacy Jan Paderewski stayed at the Glen Tavern Inn at least twice when visiting the area in 1922. He left Poland in 1913 and settled on a ranch near Paso Robles, returning to his home nation in 1919 and serving as Prime Minister for one year. He retired from politics, and in 1922 returned to the U.S. to continue his music performing a concert at Carnegie Hall as well as Madison Square Garden. Also, politician and statesman William Jennings Bryant lunched at the Inn in 1923 while running for President.

The hotel played an important social role in the community as well providing space for local church bazaars in the lobby, high school functions using the dining room, Rotary Club meetings, and the Thursday Night Bridge Club during the 1920s.

During World War II, with an acute housing shortage, the Inn was taken over for the duration by the U.S. Government and housed secretaries who worked at the Navy Base in Port Hueneme. During the 1950s and 1960s the hotel was filled with employees from the booming oil industry. At the same time a number of older Santa Paulans moved into the hotel on a permanent basis and the lobby provided a social spot to gather along with traditional Christmas buffets served in the dining room.