On your left, the church presents itself with a certain confidence: a grand front, a rising bell tower, and a façade dressed in Spanish Churrigueresque style. That mouthful simply means a very ornate branch of Baroque design, full of carved detail, flourishes, and a sense that stone itself has learned a bit of theatre.
This is First Congregational Church of Riverside, the city’s first church, founded on the first of April, eighteen seventy-two. The congregation later joined the United Church of Christ, or U-C-C, and it has long preferred covenant over creed. In plain terms, members are not asked to agree on every doctrine; they promise, instead, to walk together as they try to be faithful to Christ.
The building before you took shape through the efforts of Frank Miller, the Mission Inn’s proprietor, who joined this church in eighteen seventy-eight and pushed for a new home. Architect Myron Hunt completed it in nineteen fourteen, the same year Booker T. Washington came here to speak to the congregation, on the twenty-second of March.
What gives this place its real weight, though, is not only architecture. During the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, this church safeguarded the assets of Riverside’s Japanese American church so that property could return to its rightful owners afterward. In nineteen ninety-five, the congregation declared itself Open and Affirming, fully welcoming L-G-B-T members, and it still supports racial justice, Muslim communities, and people in need through a free clinic, meals, books, and music.
It is a handsome building, yes, but its deeper beauty lies in what it chose to protect. If you’d like to return, the office generally opens from ten in the morning to early afternoon on Mondays, and from ten to three on Wednesdays through Fridays.
Next, head to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, where healing and belief took a different kind of shape.
