{"id":425374,"date":"2026-08-06T11:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T11:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/425374\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T11:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T11:32:14","slug":"arthur-blair-historic-inn-opens-in-monrovia-with-cocktail-parlor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/425374\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Blair Historic Inn opens in Monrovia with cocktail parlor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2022, Joshua Cain and his partner, Andr\u00e9 Reyes, stepped into the foyer of the home on Monrovia\u2019s South Ivy Avenue and gaped in wonder. The red and white Victorian farmhouse had belonged to their friend, the late Steve Baker<\/a>, who served as the city\u2019s longtime historian and had packed the property with thousands of antique relics over his lifetime.<\/p>\n

\"Andr\u00e9 <\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Reyes, Jeff Godbold and Joshua Cain transformed Steve Bakers home into an inn with modern comforts.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Cain rattled off a few of the treasures: \u201cNineteenth-century etched glass dishes stacked up to the ceiling in the dining room, dozens of antique plumbing fixtures in the backyard, and five pump organs, of which we saved two.\u201d And then there were oil lamps. Hundreds and hundreds of oil lamps.<\/p>\n

Baker was known to regale locals with the history of their own homes and the founding Monrovians who lived there before them. One day in 2021, the couple had left the front door of their restored 1887 Monrovia home<\/a> open and Baker wandered in uninvited. Reyes found him standing in his living room, wearing his signature top hat. <\/p>\n

\u201cExcuse me, who are you and how can I help you?\u201d Reyes recalled asking.<\/p>\n

\"Inn <\/p>\n

Inn guests can ride one of the Viribus bikes lined up near the Blair House porch.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Baker introduced himself and said he appreciated the thoughtful period-appropriate restoration, the work of Cain and Reyes, who are preservationists. He asked them where they procured the redwood to renovate their shingle roof and the trio spent the rest of the morning excitedly discussing restoration techniques and comparing notes.<\/p>\n

Over the next year, Cain, Reyes and Baker grew closer as fellow members of the Monrovia Historic Preservation Group, bonding over their desire to preserve the town\u2019s historic character, especially its Victorian homes.<\/p>\n

When Baker died abruptly in 2022, the couple set out to honor his dream of transforming his home into a restored inn with modern comforts (read: air conditioning and electricity). With Cain\u2019s business partner Jeff Godbold, they purchased Baker\u2019s 1887 home (originally bought by Baker\u2019s great-grandfather Bradford Arthur in 1888) along with the estate\u2019s more ornate Eastlake Queen Anne Victorian-style Blair House next door, built the same year by architect Luther Reed Blair. After three years of renovation, the Arthur Blair Historic Inn opened to guests this summer. Set across three homes and with 11 guest rooms, it\u2019s a rare place where both locals and out-of-towners can escape the demands of the city and play board games in a room filled with Victorian books or borrow one of the cheery robin\u2019s egg-blue Viribus bikes and ride to the coffee shops, bakeries or parks around town<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Blair House parlor.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

One thing to note: There are no TVs on the premises.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t be staying in a gray and white corporate hotel doomscrolling or watching television,\u201d Cain said.<\/p>\n

Staying at the Arthur Blair is meant to feel like entering a time warp. \u201cYou can imagine stepping off the train in 1880s Monrovia and going and staying in this exact inn in the prettiest little town in the Old West,\u201d Cain said. <\/p>\n

Restoring the home was no easy task for Cain, Reyes and Godbold, who worked with along with design assistant Jorge Ochoa. While Baker had meticulously preserved the vintage collectibles in his family\u2019s historic home, he often struggled to afford structural repairs. Time had punctured the roof with 20 holes and whenever it rained, Baker would run around placing buckets under them and emptying them when they were full, like a game of Whac-A-Mole.<\/p>\n

\"The \"The \"Staircase <\/p>\n

The rooms feature many vintage collectibles that Steve Baker had meticulously preserved. (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n

But Cain, an interior decorator for 25 years, wasn\u2019t daunted by the chaos that came with such an extensive project. \u201cI\u2019m a glass half full person and I like to take risks,\u201d he said. \u201cI said to myself, \u2018I\u2019ve done much more with much less.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The team revived original furnishings and interior and exterior walls, while constructing a new ADA-compliant Victorian carpenter gothic cottage with stylish board and batten siding, modeled after a 19th-century Sears kit house. They often used salvage materials from Cain and Baker\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n

For the buildings to join the National Register of Historic Places \u2014 a goal for the team \u2014 intact elements like the Arthur House\u2019s original timber frame, Italianate cast-iron mantelpiece and redwood millwork fitted by hand over a century ago needed to be polished up. And some features that had previously been eliminated needed to be returned to the home, including original roofing, porches and even light switches.<\/p>\n

\"Each \"MONROVIA, \"MONROVIA, <\/p>\n

Each of the 11 guest rooms features unique, textures and personalities. One of two rooms at the Saxony Cottage has a spiral staircase that leads to an upstairs bedroom. (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n

It would\u2019ve been easier to create fresh builds or buy new decor and furnishings, Cain admits, but then it wouldn\u2019t feel like the right setting to him. \u201cWe restore for a sense of time and place,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The team hit a speed bump with the Blair House\u2019s front porch spindles, which had been removed. They located an original spindle and replicated it, including the complex crane cutouts. \u201cI could\u2019ve just gone online to Home Depot, cut their spindles in half and thrown them up on the porch,\u201d Cain said. \u201cBut instead, I took the original ones to my carpenter and we had to pull the porch apart to reinstall them, and then we painted them eight different colors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Arthur House and the Blair House are a study in contrasts: a simple two-story farmhouse with plain wood siding and a sturdy brick chimney, plopped right next to a flashy showpiece featuring a roofline with projecting gables. In the front gardens, yellow and red roses bloom to match the houses\u2019 exteriors; in the back, a sunny 4-foot cocktail pool with a natural limestone border awaits guests. Each of the 11 guest rooms is different \u2014 the classic heritage king, for instance, melds lush silk vermilion drapes with dark wood paneled ceilings and striped blue wallpaper, much of which Baker saved from the 1980s, and which Reyes and Ochoa painstakingly applied.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A writing desk in the Blair House\u2019s Luther Reed Suite.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

The inn will soon open a restaurant, Viola\u2019s Bar and Bistro (named after Baker\u2019s grandmother), serving French cuisine with Southern tinges on the vintage servingware Baker collected. The Arthur House parlor is already open to the public for drinks and dining, and features a pump organ that guests can play.<\/p>\n

The two parlors in the Blair House, reserved for inn guests only, are a Victorian dream, each adorned with 1880s Eastlake restored mahogany parlor sets, including settees, rockers, bustle benches and side chairs, reupholstered with colorful period appropriate fabric and trim. A highlight is a circa 1874 Haine Brothers solid rosewood square grand piano.<\/p>\n

Now that Cain and Reyes have built it, they wonder who will come. Cain has a hunch the clientele will be as special as the place itself. \u201cMonrovia is not a tourist haven, so guests to our inn will be destination-oriented,\u201d Cain says. \u201cPeople who come here will want the experience of letting Monrovia unfold around them as they\u2019re experiencing the inn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The pool at the Arthur Blair Historic Inn.<\/p>\n

(Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

In the future, Cain and Reyes, who also co-own Visalia\u2019s JD Hyde Historic Inn, hope to create a nationwide alliance for high-quality inns offering historic charm, so that guests can find more of the same unique properties that connect visitors to time and place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very deliberate to call this a restoration and not a renovation,\u201d Reyes said. \u201cWe are preserving and restoring the past for future generations to see what happened in 1887 in Monrovia \u2014 and how and why.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2022, Joshua Cain and his partner, Andr\u00e9 Reyes, stepped into the foyer of the home on Monrovia\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[169614,169618,3132,169615,169619,59351,4080,1073,155215,169613,48,52,51,47,50,49,23283,5682,61938,169616,169617],"class_list":["post-425374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-andre-reyes","tag-arthur-house","tag-baker","tag-blair-house","tag-cocktail-parlor","tag-dining-room","tag-guest","tag-home","tag-inn","tag-joshua-cain","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-monrovia","tag-next-year","tag-organ","tag-rare-place","tag-time-warp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}