Arts & Culture

Filming in Riverside

Step back in time along picturesque streets evoking past eras from Victorian times to the present. Riverside offers dry creek beds, lush orange groves, rivers, mountains and valleys, scrub trees and towering pines. 

The county courthouse, a gorgeous, Beaux-Arts Classics building was built over 100 years ago and has served as the backdrop for several major motion pictures.

From dusty Prohibition-era street vistas to lofty hillside perches or spectral antique cemeteries. . . Riverside's avenues in time are just minutes away from the West Coast hub of the entertainment industry.

Building styles designed by world-renowned architects include:

• Craftsman Bungalows
• Queen Anne-Style Mansions
• Gothic Revival
• Mission Revival
• Spanish Colonial
• Pueblo Revival
• Tudor Revival
• Mediterranean
• Streamline Moderne
• Historical Adobe

The dramatic architecture of the Mission Inn has created backdrops for numerous film projects including Kingpin, Hotel, and The Man in The Iron Mask.

Filming has occurred at the Historic Mission Inn which has the potential to represent many different settings. It has served as Mexico in Kingpin, a Spanish courtyard in a Shiseido commercial and Florida in Spelling’s Hotel. Riverside, only 60 miles away from Hollywood, is the 12th largest city in California providing over 85 square miles of potential filming sites.

Benedict Castle, a Medieval-Spanish structure with strong Moorish influences, was built in 1931 and used for the location of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.