Centuries-Old Buddha at Riverside's Mission Inn Gets Expert Care

People know the Mission Inn for its fantasyland look evoking California missions and European castles. So why is there an area reminiscent of a pagoda, complete with a towering Buddha?

Like the 951’s answer to William Randolph Hearst, Frank Miller, founder of Riverside’s iconic hotel, liked collecting art objects in his world travels. And those travels took him to Japan, where he became fascinated by the culture.

In 1925, he built the hotel’s Ho-O-Kan Room, with imported lanterns, carvings and — why not? — a Buddha.

“There was a fire in a pagoda. The Buddha was saved and he bought it. It was basically an orphan,” explains Scott Haskins, a freelance art conservator.

In a conversation about conservation, Haskins is telling me about his repair of art objects around the hotel as he shows me around one afternoon last week. The Buddha is among his current projects.

I’d seen it precisely one week earlier when Barbara Burns, a longtime docent and author of a recent book on Miller’s unsung sister, walked me around the hotel. We entered the Ho-O-Kan Room during the noon hour, when Haskins and crew were out to lunch.

Burns praised his work around the hotel and lamented that I wasn’t able to meet him. Two days later, after my column on Burns appeared, reader Charles Barr messaged me out of the blue to suggest his friend Haskins as an interview subject and gave me his contact info.

Sometimes everything falls into place.

And sometimes things fall apart, which is where Haskins comes in.

The Buddha, made of wood, lacquer and gilt leaf, sits on a platform against a wall in the Ho-O-Kan Room. Posed as if in meditation, seated atop a representation of a lotus leaf, the figure is estimated to be 300 years old, and it’s showing its age, with cracks and small pieces flaking off.

“Heat and humidity is the one-two punch that causes wood and paint layers to go crazy,” Haskins says. Riverside, he notes, has no shortage of weather.

Scott Haskins points to an “area of impact” indicating earlier damage to the Buddha figure at the Mission Inn as Alessandra Solomon applies wax as a protective coating. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Two of Haskins’ crew are at work, Alessandra Solomon and Diana Haskins, his wife, who are applying fresh wax to the surface. The finished portions looked brighter than a week ago. Small areas that had lifted had been reattached.

“We’re not trying to make it look perfect. We just want to keep it from falling apart,” Haskins explains. “We’re not really restoring this religious artifact, we’re preserving it.”

The Buddha has a small, if cringey, bit of pop culture immortality. In 1975’s “The Wild Party,” set in the 1920s and filmed over five weeks at the hotel, Raquel Welch sings a song titled “Singapore Sally” on a small stage in front of the Buddha. In her dance routine, she perches on its shoulder and sits in its lap.

I know the movie is about Hollywood decadence, but you’d never see the iconography in one of the hotel’s chapels being put to such kitschy, disrespectful use.

Speaking of which, Haskins leads me to the St. Cecilia Wedding Chapel, a tiny space with room for about a dozen people, where he’s also doing conservation work.

The marriage altar has been dated to 1740 and is an elaborate confection of carved wood and clay. Small pieces have popped out or off, and the bottom section was so fragile it was almost like powder.

Haskins says he’s used various conservator adhesives “to preserve the shape of it” and is also entrusted with three candlesticks, a tabernacle and a crucifix, some of which blend antique with more modern elements.

Even the newer elements, like bases, are a century old now, and the older elements have been used in religious ceremonies for two or more centuries, here or in Mexico.

Art conservator Scott Haskins is repairing a wedding altar that’s more than 250 years old in the Mission Inn’s St. Cecilia Chapel as well as the tabernacle at left and several candlesticks. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

If not always completely original, “they’re certainly worth preserving for future generations,” Haskins says of the room’s pieces. “They’ve been part of Riverside history for a hundred years. And we’re hoping they’re here for another hundred years.”

An art conservator since 1975, and trained in Italy, the Santa Barbara-based Haskins, 69, works around Southern California, including at Mission San Juan Capistrano — an actual mission, unlike the Mission Inn.

The Friends of the Mission Inn, established in 1969, funds restoration of the hotel’s art. Haskins’ first job there was in 1985, restoring Henry Chapman Ford’s historically significant paintings of all of California’s missions from 1874-1886, which document the missions’ crumbling, pre-restored state.

The hotel wasn’t faring much better a century later.

“There was a chain-link fence and barbed wire around the Mission Inn,” Haskins recalls of those ignominious days. “It was the white elephant of the Inland Empire and was the source of bankruptcies for four or five contractors.”

That was all before the city of Riverside and businessman Duane Roberts rescued the hotel and made it a going concern again.

Haskins has also done work on some 100 paintings in the hotel’s Spanish Art Gallery, repairing rips and holes, cleaning off dirt and dust, and rehanging them all, and on paintings and sculptures in the Galeria.

Haskins says he is paid but also gets room and board during his stints, such as the two-week job he’s on. Being there seems to be the real draw.

“I’ve probably stayed at every type of room over the years. I love the Mission Inn so much,” Haskins says, “that I got married 24 years ago and we spent our honeymoon here.

“Even though it’s a workplace,” he continues, “it’s still got a lot of magic.”

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I was sorry to learn that restaurateur Sartaj Singh of Rancho Cucamonga died Feb. 13 at a mere 61, with services March 5 that are said to have drawn hundreds and had Mayor Dennis Michael among the speakers. Singh, who learned to cook in Italy, was behind a series of Italian restaurants in the city: Chianti, Antonino’s and his current Cara Mia. The well-liked Singh must have been the only Indian-American to belong to the local chapter of the Sons of Italy.

David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, drawing dozens. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.