Architectural Heritage Draws Families : Riverside: The historic section is the heart of the city and the preferred area for homeowners who like its small-town ambience.

When Ophelia Valdez-Yeager decided to attend UC Riverside in 1965, her counselor warned that she would be surrounded by farmers. “I’d grown up in the city so I thought it would be fun to go to college in the country,” Valdez-Yeager said.

After graduation and marriage, Valdez-Yeager, and her husband, Ley Yeager, now an elementary school principal, thought Riverside, with its small-town feeling, would be a good place to buy a house and raise a family. In 1972 they bought a Mission Revival style home for $30,950.

“We settled in the ‘wood’ streets part of town,” Valdez-Yeager said. “Oakwood, Elmwood, Rosewood. Our block was lined with well-maintained, older homes. The moms bonded and we all helped raise each other’s children.”

Riverside no longer has the rural and open feel she remembers from college days, but Valdez-Yeager, a part-time assistant to the mayor, believes the historic core of the city, with its rich past and architectural heritage, still gives a sense of how “life used to be.”

While Riverside, located 56 miles east of Los Angeles, extends over an 82-square-mile area, the much smaller historic section remains the heart of the city and the preferred location for homeowners who enjoy its small-town ambience.

The historic area is bounded by the Santa Ana River on the west, by the 60 and 215 freeways on the north, by Chicago Avenue on the east and by Jurupa Avenue on the south.

Founded by John North in 1870, Riverside was settled by 25 adventurous families who came west with little agricultural experience.

In 1873 colonist Eliza Tibbets planted two Washington navel orange trees that had been sent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The resulting seedless oranges were superior to other cultivated varieties. After Matthew Gage developed Riverside’s extraordinary irrigation canals in the 1880s, large-scale planting of the Washington navel became economically feasible.

In the next decades, oranges became the main crop of a 100,000-acre agricultural empire in the Riverside area. One of the original trees planted by Tibbets is still bearing fruit in a protected spot near downtown.

The importance of citrus in the development of Riverside can be seen in exhibits in the new California Citrus State Historic Park, an outdoor museum re-creating the orange grove setting of pre-World War II Riverside.

Vince Moses, 46, worked to establish the museum and to preserve remaining portions of the “orange belt” around the downtown area.

Moses enrolled at UC Riverside in the late 1970s, and he remained in the area when he became curator of history at the Riverside Municipal Museum. He and his wife, Cate Whitmore, 49, and stepsons, Robert Ostlund and Ingmar Ostlund, live in a historic bungalow near Mt. Rubidoux. “We love our home, which is close to a river bottom and has almost a rural feel, but city services are nearby,” he said.

When Moses received an appealing job offer in Northern California three years ago, “My family was broken-hearted,” he said. “The children had grown up exploring the wonderful architecture in town. Living here had given them a real appreciation of California’s heritage. I decided to turn down the new job.”

“In Riverside there is a sense of a small town mixed with suburban sprawl,” Moses added. “It’s still possible for individuals to have an impact on the direction and character of the community.”

Modern-day Riverside was born after World War II, when many of the orange groves surrounding the town came down for housing development, and industry replaced agriculture in economic importance. New suburbs spread south of the original downtown area. Retail stores followed, and soon, downtown Riverside became a mix of historic structures, professional offices and government buildings, but few residents.

It was the small-town size and feel of historic Riverside that attracted Zelma Beard, who first became acquainted with the community while living at nearby March Air Force Base. Divorced, and with modest business experience, Beard and a friend, Sue Mitchell, took a gamble and began Riverside Personnel Services in 1978.

“People in town recognized our efforts to make a life and business here. We worked hard, became active in the community and, before we knew it, Riverside was accepting of us,” Beard said.

In 1989 Beard, 47, purchased a 1908 two-story Craftsman bungalow for $290,000 in the Mt. Rubidoux Historic District near Fairmount Park. “I wanted an older home,” Beard said. “But every house I looked at needed a lot of work. When I walked into this house, it reminded me of my grandmother’s home in Texas, and I knew right away I wanted to buy it.

“My house is like a person,” she said. “It has character, soul and warmth. It puts its arms around people who come in.”

Beard likes the central location of Riverside for her numerous athletic pursuits. “I can go skiing or be at the beach in an hour, and there are plenty of places in town for bicycling and golf,” she said.

Housing prices in the historic part of Riverside range from $105,000 for a two-bedroom starter home to $1.9 million for a contemporary 5,173squarefoot home and guest house perched on a granite rock overlooking the city.

“You get more for your money in real estate in Riverside,” said Marie Hemphy of Shelter Realty. “And there is a wide variety of housing units available, from modest bungalows to estate properties.”

From its early Citrus Experiment Station serving the agricultural industry, the University of California has influenced Riverside’s development. In 1954 a full-sized campus opened on the east side of town, bringing the cultural and educational opportunities of university life.

Reasonable housing costs and job availability kept Christopher and Deana Morse in town after they completed graduate school at UC Riverside in 1989. The couple, both teachers, purchased a new, three-bedroom home in 1990 for $132,000. “We feel we got real value for our money here,” Morse, 32, said. “Our house is right on the riverbed and it’s very quiet.”

However, increasing crime in the area has Morse apprehensive. “In the past years there have been several murders within a mile of our house,” Morse said. “The police are doing their best, considering finances and other constraints. But we’re worried about the future. When our 3-year-old son is ready for school, we’ll have to consider the question of safety.”

Lt. Mario Canale, the Riverside Police Department’s commander of Area One, the policing precinct that covers the historic district, understands citizen concerns about crime issues.

“Our strategy is to work with the public in identifying the causes of crime. Then together we can whittle away at the problems that lead to crime. The citizens in Area One need to be thanked for their participation and desire to reduce crime in their neighborhoods,” Canale said.

The centerpiece of historic Riverside is the Mission Inn, one of the region’s architectural delights. In 1902 Frank Miller renamed his family’s hotel as the Mission Inn. Capitalizing on nostalgia for California’s Spanish heritage, Miller pieced together an incredibly opulent and stylistically diverse hotel of 240 rooms over the next 30 years, furnishing it with antique treasures from around the world.

After closing in 1985 for a $40-million-plus renovation, the Mission Inn reopened in 1993 as a defining center of a revitalized historic downtown area.

An element of the renewal strategy includes public/private partnerships for the preservation of historic homes and the rebuilding of downtown neighborhoods. Raymond and Susan Wade purchased one of these partnership homes, a two-story Colonial Revival, for $192,000 in 1992. The price included moving the house and rehabbing it.

Susan Wade, 47, was reluctant about Riverside until she met members of her husband’s congregation at the Eden Lutheran Church. “I came from Anaheim with my feet dragging,” Wade said. “My first response to Riverside was ‘I hate heat and I hate smog.’ But we were drawn to the people in this parish, and I overcame my objections to the climate.”

“When we bought it, our house had been badly damaged from an arson fire. But next door was a house that had been rehabbed and it was easy to imagine what this neglected house could become. The house was so beautifully redone that we were invited to be on the Historic Homes Tour this spring,” Wade said.

The process of bringing a neighborhood back is full of risks, Wade added. “But people who buy these wonderful old homes are trying to establish neighborhoods as safe and nurturing places. It’s a step-by-step process and we’re glad to be part of it.”

At a Glance

Population 1994 estimate: 40,637 1990-94 change: 7.2%

Annual income Per capita: 11,890 Median household: 27,212

Household distribution Less than $30,000: 46.7% $30,000 - $60,000: 36.7% $60,000 - $100,000: 12.1% $100,000 - $150,000: 12.9% $150,000 +: 1.6%

Old Riverside Home Sale Data

Sample Size (for 10-year period): 2,198 Ave. home size (square feet): 1,395 Ave. Year Built: 1941 Ave. No. Bedrms: 2.72 Ave. No. Baths: 1.54 Pool: 9% View homes: 5% Central air: 30% Floodzone: 61% Price Range (1993-94): $54,500-340,000 Predominant Value$115,000 Age Range: 2-94 years Predominant Age: 53 years

AVERAGE SALES DATA

Year Total $ per Median Sales sq. ft. price 1994* 80 $84.21 $117,950 1993 145 $88.52 $122,382 1992 173 $93.89 $125,086 1991 197 $92.72 $122,834 1990 302 $92.37 $124,807 1989 313 $82.94 $117,124 1988 301 $70.41 $94,413 1987 307 $64.90 $87,892 1986 189 $62.92 $84,560 1985 191 $58.21 $77,693

* 1994 data current through May.

Source: TRW Redi Property Data, Riverside