Added: 02/22/2006 |
Quality Inn is a "whimsical, mysterious, and slightly bizarre"The company was started in 1939 as Quality Courts United, a referral chain consisting of about seven motel owners from North and South Carolina. Later, the motel chain operated simply under the name Quality Inn. Quality Inn accepted to franchise hotels without strict norms or guidelines from the company. This is different from Holiday Inn which from their early beginnings implicated numerous mandatory standards and guidelines (e.g. room size and amenities) at every one of their locations. In addition, Quality Inn accepted franchisees with existing hotels. In 1989 the company introduced Sleep Inn, a revolutionary economy brand utilizing a consistent interior corridor design prototype and all-new construction. In January 2005, introduced a new upscale, all-suite hotel designed in contemporary style called Cambria Suites. As of late 2005, 20 Cambria Suites hotels were in the pipeline, with locations such as Boise, Idaho and Savannah, Georgia scheduled to open in 2006.
The Mission quality Inn is a "whimsical, mysterious and slightly bizarre" historic landmark hotel in downtown Riverside, California. The core of the property was a 2-story, 12-room adobe boarding house called the "Glenwood Cottage", begun by Christopher Columbus Miller in 1876. It predated the founding of Riverside. Miller's son Frank expanded the boarding house in 1902 and essentially continued obsessively building, in a wild variety of shapes, until he died in 1935.
Miller built in reinforced concrete and developed an accomplished, expressive vernacular style drawn from random historical styles. Accumulating one section over another, addition upon addition, the result is an enormously complicated and intricate built environment, comparable to the Winchester House, or to a self-contained medieval European city.
The Mission contains narrow passageways like a Tuscan village, exterior arcades, a prominent medieval-style clock overlooking the Spanish patio, a deep but sun-drenched five-story rotunda, innumerable patios and windows, towers, minarets, a Cloister Wing (with Catacombs), a high pedestrian bridge, and a five-story spiral staircase, among many other features. The 1914 Spanish Wing in itself contains a castle courtyard, open arcades, Mexican tiled roofs, flying buttresses and Mediterranean domes. Miller also traveled and collected over these thirty years, bringing his treasures back to the hotel for display. The various collections and museum-quality artifacts on the property has an estimated value of $5 million.
In the context of other important cultural losses in Riverside, the hotel was closed in 1985, restored at a cost of $55 million, and re-opened in 1992. As of 2005, it is an operating quality inn with multiple restaurants and about 250 guest rooms and suites, each of them with unique views and features. Reportedly the most spacious and comfortable are the Moorish rooms along "Author's Row".
For 125 years one of the best quality inn hotels has been the literal center of Riverside, host to a number of seasonal and holiday functions, as well as occasional political functions and other major social gatherings. Pat and Richard Nixon were married at one of the two wedding chapels here; the Reagans honeymooned here. This quality inn is a National historic landmark and a California historical landmark.
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