History :
Thousands of miles from the battlefield, Riverside, like cities over much of the world, mourned it's young men lost in World War 1. As early as 1919, community leaders were promoting the idea of a municipal auditorium which would also serve as a memorial to these men. A $200,000 bond issue for the construction of such memorial, though, was narrowly defeated in a 1921 election.
In 1925, the Mission Inn's Frank Miller renewed discussion of a memorial with an offer to the city of a large piece of land at the corner of 7th (now Mission Inn Ave.) and Lemon Streets as the location for a municipal auditorium with rooms where veterans could meet. Miller's gift was conditional to the construction of only one building - at a cost of not less than $200,000 - on the site.
The Daily Enterprise supported the memorial, as proposed by Miller, as a "patriotic need" and endorsed passage of a bond issue to fund it. Passage of that issue, in early 1926, committed $180,000 for construction and interior equipment.
Less than three weeks after the bond issue monies became available, the City Council selected Arthur Benton, architect of the early portions of the Mission Inn, to design the new Auditorium and war memorial. Local architect G. Stanley Wilson was hired to assist Benton.
Benton Envisioned "a fireproof building of the California type, similar to the general style of the Mission Inn, and in keeping with the background and tradition of Riverside".
Assistant Secretary of War, T. Trubee Davison, attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony on May 27, 1927
Arthur Benton died in 1928 and G. Stanley Wilson supervised the remainder of the construction from Benton's plans.
The Municipal Auditorium and Soldiers' Memorial Building was dedicated on March 14, 1929. Miller's grant of land stipulates that the property be "maintained in perpetuity" as a memorial to the fallen soldiers...a reminder of the war's tragic toll.
