Oh, Casa Blanca! No,… not the movie with the classically good-looking star Humphrey Bogart, but the grand hotel that once stood at 210 South Fern & West Emporia Street right here in Ontario. A be...autiful, two-story, gray brick building in the architectural style of Italian Renaissance Revival, containing a welcoming mansard-roofed veranda entrance leading to the main lobby. Once inside, the lobby featured a grandiose fireplace surrounded by walls of rich mahogany. Inviting chairs were luxuriously upholstered in leather and warm tapestry. The hotel boasted 42 mahogany furnished bedrooms with en suite, one large dining room tastefully decorated in blues and golds against soft gray and white backgrounds, china, silverware and candlesticks emblazoned with the Casa Blanca monogram, and an additional small but intimate dining room.
Ground was broken on July 1, 1914 and the hotel opened its doors in April 1915. Built by the Butler Bros. Construction Company of Los Angeles and costing $106,000 to build and furnish this grand hotel was the stopover place for many travelers heading from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. It attracted famous visitors like legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille, known for such films as “The Plainsman” and “The Ten Commandments,” and the great comedic actor Charlie Chaplin, known for his film roles in “The Great Dictator” and “The Kid.”
The Casa Blanca was a resort style hotel often compared Riverside’s Mission Inn and San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado. It offered the leisure activities of tennis, golf, casino style gambling, billiards, and served gourmet meals prepared by French-trained chefs. Breakfast and lunch cost 75¢ and dinner was $1.00. Interestingly, part of the hotel functioned as a home for retired ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church, while still serving traveling guests. The hotel was so well received that one reporter noted “such approval spells permanent success for Casa Blanca” (Daily Report, April 30, 1915), but unfortunately that was not to be the case.
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