Paul R. Williams

The centerpiece of the downtown area of my home city is the Mission Inn.
The city has an uglier, more ghetto sister city less than ten miles away.
San Bernardino is a dump that used to overshadow Riverside but in recent years Riverside has become a wholly acceptable place to live.

 Meanwhile, San Bernardino has largely remained a poverty stricken, drug infested, undereducated dump with no desirable city core.
It's only desirable areas are on the city's outskirts or just outside of the city limits.

But the city does have at least one interesting landmark.
San Bernardino has an iconic hotel of its own.
The Arrowhead Springs Resort was intended to be a destination resort for the rich and famous.
A changing economy and the rise in popularity of air travel shifted traffic to more exotic locations and the hotel failed.

Indians thought that the arrowhead-shaped geological clearance caused by a hillslide pointed to water.
As it turned out they were right.
The Arrowhead brand of Artesian is sourced here.

A local band of Native-Americans has done so well at their casino that they are buying up much of the land once belonging to their tribe - including the once shuttered hotel.

I always wondered what the building was whenever we passed by on our way to mountaintop resort areas so I had to Google it for more information.
It's a nice edifice that was designed by the Black Los Angeles-based architect Paul Revere Williams.

 Sure, that was interesting enough but the guy also designed the iconic Theme Building at LAX.
When we were kids we always thought that it was a Jetsons-styled control tower.
As it turns out, the dude was once one of the most sought after architects in the Southland.
He was a leader in Mid-Cent-Mod architecture throughout Southern California and Vegas.

 But he could also pull off more traditional buildings like his improvements to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

 He was once known as the 'architect to the stars'.

On my next trip home I may have to check out the resort in a neighboring town just to see what the brotha' could do.