User:Bent Corydon/Historic Y.M.C.A. Building, Downtown Riverside, California

The Historic Y.M.C.A. Building a.k.a. The Life Arts Building, Downtown Riverside, California

The Historic Y.M.C.A. Building is located in Downtown Riverside, California occupying a quarter block between Lime and Lemon Streets facing University Avenue. Built in 1909, it was the second Y.M.C.A. building in Riverside.“The building has three floors and 47 thousand square feet.

The Y.M.C.A. vacated the building in 1968 moving to newly constructed premises on Jefferson Street which it still occupies to this date in 2009. A hundred years ago – until 1968 when the Y moved to Jefferson Street into the modern more spacious premises it still occupies – the Y.M.C.A. provided low cost accommodation along with the array of social services for which it remains famous around the world to this day.

There are some 25 studios on the top floor of the building many of which open for Arts Walk. Also during Arts Walk the lobby of the building and the Reception Halls are made available for gallery displays of various artists’ works such as paintings, sculpture, jewelry, pottery, photography and musical performances. The second floor balcony is lit and the music spills onto Lemon Street setting the mood for the night’s Arts Walkers. The gymnastics that were a key feature of the Y are still at the building: City Gym’s aerobics and weight training echo the hard workouts that have always been signature activities of the Y.

Mostly on Saturdays, the building’s three halls are rented for wedding receptions and quinceañeras. Quinceañeras are coming-of-age parties for Hispanic girls around their 15th (Spanish: “quience”) year. The Life Arts Center provides full packages of decorations, catered food and security for these events and has done so for the past 16 years.

In a 1996 Press Enterprise article entitled “Landmark could become community asset” Tom Patterson (famed Riv. Co. Historic writer of several books and many articles) wrote, “The Cultural Heritage Landmark status of the building will help bring about its continued existence. The careful preservation of the interesting exterior will also help. The further development of the building as a site for civic, community and art activities would still more”.

On March 14 at 3.00 p.m. – with the sun beating down – the corner stone of the Riverside Y.M.C.A. was laid with “Impressive Ceremonies” and an “Inspiring Address Delivered by H.J. Mc ’Coy of San Francisco” announced a Daily Press Headline. Important men in three piece suits and bowler hats stood on scaffolding surrounding the stone. Chiseled into the marble were the words “To the Glory of God and the uplifting of man”. The Daily Press reported, “The music will be furnished by the Y.M.C.A. band in new uniform, this being the first public appearance of the members since their suits were received. The musicians will render a selection at the corner of Eighth and Main Streets before taking up the march to the site.”

In 1909 the third floor hotel rooms had access to two balconies and views of black model T fords passing by mingling with the horses and the carriages and folk just walking by on what was then 8th Street and Lemon Street. Riverside was after all a wealthy agricultural town thriving mainly by virtue of its verdant citrus orchards. The wealthy class of landowners was able to contribute – along with Frank Miller of the Mission Inn – to what many consider to be amongst the world’s most beautiful Y.M.C.A. buildings.

This Riverside Y.M.C.A. had a large interior pool where boys learned to swim. It is an interesting cultural observation that the boys all swam naked as shown in a photo taken in 1923 and – as late as 1951 – there was a photo in the Daily Press that shows rear shots of boys diving into the pool in their birthday suits. These days, despite the 60s, such a scene would not be acceptable.

The pool is still there although it doesn’t comply with modern safety standards and so cannot be used by swimmers, even those wearing trunks. Still we are constantly being asked about the pool by men over fifty who learned to swim here.

Amongst the building’s guests while it was a Y.M.C.A. have been thousands of boys who learned the disciplines of exercise, swimming, gymnastics and the ideals upon which this country was built. Mostly local boys attended of course but there were international conventions held at the building where boys from all over the world arrived at a time when travel was expensive and took weeks aboard a ship as opposed to hours on a plane. Such gatherings were the adventures of a life time for many. The Y owned a camp in Idyllwild to where boys drove from the building in model Ts to conquer the great outdoors.

Thousands stayed in the low cost upstairs hotel rooms between 1909 and 1968. These rooms all had sinks with running hot and cold water along with steam heaters of the period. For “air conditioning” a huge water cooler on the roof fed into large unsightly ducts that wound along the hallways and fed into each room. Toilets were provided: two toilet rooms each with two bowls and no showers on the top floor. These were shared by the guests of the thirty rooms. These rooms were humble resting places, but they nested in a safe, comfortable and welcoming environment. At the Y everyone was a V.I.P.

The historic Y is a survivor. In 1972 the building escaped destruction by the fire that devoured its neighbor, The Arlington Apartments on the corner of Lime and University in front of the fire station.

That close escape was the second fire that failed to kill the Y building. 18 years earlier, on Tuesday, February 16, 1954 fire gutted a key section of the building’s interior. It started in the large stone fireplace in the main lobby of the building and roared up the staircase through the roof causing a panicked evacuation of the hotel rooms with some guests fleeing across the roof and jumping the two and a half stories to the street below. The burnt section was repaired when volunteers stepped up with labor and money as is the tradition with the Y. However it would be almost half a century later before a complete sprinkler system was installed throughout the building.

It was not only fire that has threatened the building’s historic exterior: “An architect’s pencil was potentially as deadly as fire to its Italian Renaissance architecture,” says Corydon. Supporting that assertion, The Riverside Daily Press’s issue on Friday May 20, 1951 carried an article entitled “Revamping Expansion of Y on Drawing Board”. The drawings show the building wrapped in a box of plaster and glass. The relevant passage states: “Plans call for the face lifting of the present building’s exterior to be affected by construction of a façade around the existing structure out of steel framing and stucco.”

While the firemen saved it twice, presumably it was the Y’s shortage of funds that saved the 1909 building’s architecture from post war modernization.

Intended as the first phase of this total rebuild, a new Y gymnasium in the form of an Annex to the building was constructed in 1953 in accordance with the 50’s plans referred to in the P.E. article. Those plans were drawn in agreement with post second WW thinking in architecture. Faced with pressure to quickly and cheaply rebuild bombed European cities, architects placed an emphasis on function over form. If the building worked well there was no need for frills. Clean lines were in and decoration in any form was spurned.

Reflecting this thinking the 1953 built Addition to the former Y.M.C.A. stands in stark contrast to the original Italian Renaissance section. So, despite attempts to color coordinate them, these two sections of the building are at odds architecturally to this day. Had the plans for covering the original building with concrete and steel been completed that would of course not have been the case.

The new gym did function well. It was constructed with reinforced concrete covered by a plastered-over brick exterior. Inside the Annex huge laminated wood beams support a roof over the basketball court. Below the basketball court were steam rooms, showers, locker rooms and bathrooms. These improvements satisfied the needs of the Y for another 15 years.

The building was owned and occupied by the Y.M.C.A. for a total of fifty-nine years after the cornerstone was laid in 1909. When the Y left no one could find the keys for the entrance. For all those 59 years the doors had never been locked!

The Y’s move from the decaying downtown of the late sixties was a severe blow for Riverside’s downtown. After the buzz of youthful activity during the Y years, the energy inside and surrounding the building drained and the excitement died. A key was made and its doors were locked.

The former Y building then languished and decayed from lack of use and maintenance. The only exception to the dead silence was the front hall. “For six years after the Y moved the building was a ‘Gheel House’ that is a halfway house for retarded persons.” wrote Tom Patterson. During those six years the building was owned by three prominent Riverside men: James F. Davidson, Jr., F. Mumper and Howard H. Hays Jr. There was no income from the property to pay for maintenance so the elements took their toll. The owners – in an act of charity – had taken the building off the hands of the Y, enabling it to move to modern premises; but now they were looking to unload it. They soon found a group that was glad to take it off their hands.

“Next it was acquired by a chartered branch of Scientology, the organization headed by the late L. Ron Hubbard” wrote Tom Patterson in his 1996 article in the Press Enterprise. “Corydon, manager of the [Life Arts] Center was originally a participant in the Scientology organization, but fell out with it and is one of the authors of a book entitled “L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?”

Three years before buying the Y building an independent and autonomous “Mission” of Scientology had set up shop in a little house on Mulberry Street near 14th Street. “It became so overcrowded that it literally shook at night from the activities of the large number of young people attending lectures, doing courses and getting counseling” says Corydon.

“This situation was clearly a safety hazard and that fact had caught the attention of the City. So larger premises were needed and a search was launched. Informed that the former Y.M.C.A. building was for sale, what my friend and I found was a building in very bad shape; some of the most egregious features being:

“The upstairs bathroom had a ‘carpet’ of cockroaches attracted by a bowl of dog food left there for the lone caretaker’s dog. The roof had several gaping holes so large that the blue sky above was the key feature. What was left of a 1909 paintjob was a faded hospital green throughout the building. One ceiling near the front lobby was sagging almost 12 inches and it was close to collapsing. Two key beams were like sponges from constant water leaking from the balcony above. There were leaking gas pipes and water was spilling from pipes in a dozen places. Plastered walls and ceilings had huge cracks and large sections of plaster were missing exposing the underlying flammable wooden lath. The original 1909 gym – the site of numerous local and international events in times past – was storage for hundreds of opera props stacked on what had been a floating wooden floor. It was now splintered and dry providing tinder for the slightest spark. The roof had long since ceased to prevent rain from pouring into the building. It needed a complete rebuild.”

But, whatever the condition, the price tag was low, so in1974 the building was purchased by the Riverside Mission of Scientology.

The Scientology era was the building’s most controversial. It lasted for over 8 years. The impact on the local community was mostly the hard sell on the streets by young men and women pushing free lectures and personality tests and a low cost beginner’s course. Subsequent courses and counseling were costly. The group grew at a rapid pace with staff expanding to over 200 full time and with membership expanding to well over a thousand.

Says Corydon, “The courses and counseling delivered at the Riverside Mission were a lower level than those of Scientology’s higher organizations and many told us they found them useful and workable for the most part if expensive. Not everyone agreed with that. However, regardless of whatever one thinks of any part of Scientology, this period was without question good for the building’s structural and historic integrity.”

Much of the extensive earnings from that period were plowed into the building’s preservation and improvement. The interior brick work was exposed from under a thick layer of plaster throughout the building and the roof was replaced preserving the building from what would otherwise have become further extensive water damage.

Since it was built in 1909 the former Y never pretended to be the Mission Inn. No presidents visited it or stayed in its low cost rooms. The Historic Y has for the most part hosted regular folk on a budget. But there are a few exceptions:

Perhaps the most prominent celebrity to visit the building, by today’s Hollywood star studded standards, was John Travolta, a Scientologist who came twice during 1977, following his ascent to stardom in the T.V. sit com Welcome Back Cotter and in the movie Saturday Night Fever. He entertained a crowd of young Scientologists with stand up comic routines. Musicians from the Glen Campbell T.V. show performed in the front hall around the same time.

The Scientology era ended in 1982 when the local Riverside group cut all association and connection with Scientology’s main organizations. It was not an easy divorce. The head organization sued claiming title to the property. The previous steady income – from Scientologists, who decided in large numbers to stay with the main organization – died. The electric and water bills went unpaid with the usual consequences. Somehow money was raised to turn the lights on but a month later bills came due again and, again, the lights went off.

To solve this and other financial needs, for a couple of years the break-away group continued some modified courses and counseling. This attracted other disaffected ex Scientologists from outside of Riverside, a substantial number from Denmark, Sweden, Holland, England and New Zealand. Their donations kept the lights on. Then other solutions utilizing the rental of spaces in the building were tried with examples being a video arcade, a comic book shop, and a sound-proofed practice area for the local rock group The Skeletones. A fully equipped sound studio moved in and lasted several years until a hard robbery in full daylight stripped it of a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment.

It was during this time Corydon wrote a book entitled L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? It was reviewed by the New York Times, and Corydon was interviewed twice on C.N.N., on C.B.S. Morning show, on Charlie Rose’s show and People Magazine amongst others. The publicity surrounding the book on T.V. and radio added further lawsuits to the one on the building and there were counter suits from Corydon and the Life Arts Center.

These lawsuits along with the legal dispute over title to the building continued from ‘82 through ‘91. A settlement in 1992 saw the break-away organization – merged in 1982 as a new corporation unrelated to Scientology and renamed the Life Arts Center – in possession of the building. During the legal battle the building became a Mecca for artists looking to rent studios they could afford. The company of a community of like minded artists along with galleries in which they could show their work was a bonus they couldn’t resist. So, by the time of the legal settlements in 1992 the building had accumulated dozens of resident artists.

This spontaneous and Bohemian art movement beginning in the early 80s was encouraged by Bent Corydon but fostered and nurtured by Mark Schooley. Mark is now the head of Riverside Community Arts Association which has a major gallery nearby on Lemon Street. “Mark Schooley organized constant shows over a decade from the early 80s to the early 90s” says Corydon. “He oversaw the building’s activities and collected rents from the artists.

“These artists sometimes lived in the studios taking showers in the mornings in a hastily constructed stall in one of the upstairs toilet rooms.” It was a wild time and the mostly young artists found likeminded creative souls to inspire their creative juices. Mark was and is himself a well known and much admired artist. He inspires and helps artists find their voice. However his talents as an organizer and manager is what enabled the building to survive financially during the legal battle. The meager income from the rents, low as they were, enabled legal filings and attorney fees. There were also several ex Scientologists and anonymous strangers who made loans or donated collectively several hundred thousand dollars enabling the legal battle to continue.

Peace from legal conflicts brought renovation of the building back on track. The live-in artists were slowly phased out and work-only art studios were phased in. In1994 the Redevelopment Agency leased the Life Arts Center’s parking lot across from the building on Lemon Street. The lease had conditions requiring that the money be spent on repairing the exterior of the building and its landscaping. Extensive repairs were made and the City also repaired the sidewalks and moved trees and palms. For its part the Life Arts Center also contributed substantial funds and labor. The result was a major upgrade of the property’s exterior.

“By this time the debts of the legal disputes were being called in. The building was groping for activities that would earn more than the studios and galleries could provide. We were just renovating the place with no particular function in mind. The building desperately needed some identity and income earning function.