One day in 2021, Joshua Cain and André Reyes left the front door of their restored 1887 Monrovia home open, and Steve Baker walked in without being invited. Reyes found the city historian standing in the living room in his signature top hat. Baker said he liked the period-appropriate restoration, asked where they had found redwood for the shingle roof, and stayed the rest of the morning talking technique.
Baker's own house on South Ivy Avenue was in worse shape. By the time he died abruptly in 2022, the roof had about 20 holes, and on rainy days he moved buckets under the leaks and emptied them as they filled. That house is now the Arthur Blair Historic Inn. Its front parlor is open to the public for drinks and dining, and the middle Victorian holds Viola's Bar & Bistro.
Monrovia's preservation community has spent years restoring houses and leading tours past them. This is the first of its projects with a public dining room. The same groups behind it are running a fall calendar, and that calendar now has a natural place to end.
Two houses that kept getting moved
The inn sits at 508 and 512 South Ivy Avenue. Both Victorians were built in 1887, during Monrovia's first big building boom.
The showpiece is the Blair House at 508. Monrovia architect Luther Reed Blair designed and built it as his family home. The Monrovia Historical Museum calls it an excellent example of Eastlake Queen Anne Victorian architecture, with a tower, stained glass, decorative woodwork and an ornate front porch. It was moved to Duarte Road in 1927. It was moved again in 1993, when it faced demolition and Baker bought it and had it relocated next to his own house.
The house at 512 has two names, and both hold up. The Museum calls it the John and Julia Brossart House, one of Monrovia's oldest surviving homes. It was built on Heliotrope Avenue, moved to Lemon Avenue in the early 1900s, and eventually ended up on Ivy. The Los Angeles Times calls it the Arthur House, after Bradford Arthur, Baker's great-grandfather, who bought it in 1888. Put the Arthur family and the Blair family together and you get the inn's name.
Baker was a fifth-generation Monrovian and served as the city's official historian from 1991 until his death in 2022. In 2024, both houses were added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated city Historic Landmarks.
Three years, and a porch taken apart for its spindles
After Baker died, Cain, Reyes and Cain's business partner Jeff Godbold bought both houses. Saxony Design Build Inc did the restoration. It took about three years and was done with the Monrovia Old House Preservation Group, or MOHPG.
To get the houses onto the National Register, the team had to bring back features that had been removed over the years, including the original roofing, porches and even light switches. The Blair House's porch spindles were missing. The team found one original, had it copied down to its crane cutouts, took the porch apart to install the copies, and painted them eight different colors.
"It's very deliberate to call this a restoration and not a renovation," Reyes told the Los Angeles Times.
There is one new building on the property. It's a carpenter gothic cottage with board-and-batten siding, modeled on a 19th-century Sears kit house and built to be ADA-compliant. The Times calls it the Saxony Cottage, and one of its two rooms has a spiral staircase up to the bedroom. All three buildings together hold 11 suites. MOHPG says it's the first inn of its kind in Monrovia. There are no TVs anywhere on the property.
More than 200 people came to the grand opening on July 4. It was a fundraiser for the Monrovia Historical Society, and the proceeds went to restoring the Society's Anderson House.
What's open to you without booking a room
Most of the inn is for overnight guests. The two Blair House parlors are guest-only. They hold restored 1880s Eastlake mahogany parlor sets and a rosewood square grand piano from around 1874 by Haine Brothers.
Two spaces are open to everyone else. The first is the parlor of the Arthur House, which serves drinks and food and has a pump organ guests are allowed to play. Baker had five pump organs on the property, and the team saved two.
The second is Viola's, named after Baker's grandmother. The Times describes French cooking with Southern touches, served on the vintage dishes Baker collected. Viola's own site lists European wines and a seasonal menu. According to Viola's reservation page, the schedule is:
- Brunch: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day except Wednesday
- Dinner: 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday through Saturday
- Closed: Wednesday
MOHPG's August announcement listed Tuesday as the closed day, so check the reservation page before you go midweek. Room bookings are on the Arthur Blair Historic Inn website or by phone at (626) 214-8549.
Cain has said who he thinks will stay there. "Monrovia is not a tourist haven, so guests to our inn will be destination-oriented," he told the Times. Diners are a different group. Brunch six days a week and three dinner nights give people who already live here plenty of ways to use the place.
The fall calendar comes from the same people
The groups behind the inn are also behind most of this fall's history events. MOHPG worked on the restoration, and the Historical Society got the opening-night proceeds. This fall, MOHPG runs a monthly walking tour and a cemetery tour, and the Society opens Anderson House one Sunday a month. The city adds its own Old Town events on top of that.
| Date | Event | Where and when | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat., Oct. 3 | MOHPG Historic Walking Tour | SE corner of Palm and Myrtle, 10 a.m. | $5, about two hours |
| Sat., Oct. 10 | Old Town Fall Festival | Library Park and Old Town, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. | Wagon and train rides, crafts, library storytimes |
| Sun., Oct. 18 | Anderson House open day | 215 E. Lime Ave., 1 to 4 p.m. | Third Sunday of each month |
| Sat., Oct. 24 | Live Oak Cemetery Tour | Live Oak Cemetery, 3:30 p.m. | $25, about 1½ hours, limited to 25 people |
| Sun., Oct. 25 | A Taste of Old Town Monrovia | 534 S. Myrtle Ave., 5 to 8 p.m. | 21+, Kiwanis Club fundraiser for youth programs |
| Sat., Oct. 31 | Trick or Treat Halloween Bash | Library Park, 321 S. Myrtle Ave., 3 to 6 p.m. | Trick-or-treating with Old Town merchants |
| Sat., Nov. 7 | MOHPG Historic Walking Tour | SE corner of Palm and Myrtle, 10 a.m. | $5, about two hours |
| Sun., Nov. 15 | Anderson House open day | 215 E. Lime Ave., 1 to 4 p.m. | Third Sunday of each month |
| Thu., Dec. 3 | Holiday Parade | North on Myrtle from Walnut to Palm, 7 p.m. | Road closures 5 to 10 p.m. |
The cemetery tour will sell out first. MOHPG is running it one day only. It covers Monrovia's early families and the part they played in founding the town. Tickets are available at the Monrovia Community Center, 119 W. Palm Ave., by calling 626-256-8246, or online through the city's recreation catalog. All proceeds go to the Historical Society. The Halloween and parade pages on the city site show 2026 dates but were last updated in 2025, so check the details as each date gets closer.
Lining the calendar up with Viola's hours
Some dates line up with Viola's schedule almost exactly.
- Saturday, Oct. 3. The walking tour starts at 10 a.m. and runs about two hours, which leaves time for brunch before Viola's stops serving at 2. That night, Centre Stage holds its first fundraising gala since 2006, an adults-only evening from 7:30 to 11 p.m.
- Sunday, Oct. 18. Have brunch on Ivy, then visit Anderson House when it opens at 1. Anderson House is the house the July 4 opening raised money to restore.
- Saturday, Oct. 24. The cemetery tour starts at 3:30 and runs about an hour and a half. Saturday is a dinner night at Viola's, and dinner runs until 10.
- Saturday, Nov. 7. This is the same plan as Oct. 3, a month later, for anyone who misses the first tour.
Overnight guests get one more option, the robin's-egg-blue Viribus bikes parked by the Blair House porch for rides to coffee shops, bakeries and parks around town.
The parade on Dec. 3 is on a Thursday. Viola's serves dinner on Thursdays, and the parade starts on Myrtle at 7 p.m.
Chris Reisbeck has followed this preservation work on South Ivy and the historic streets around Old Town Monrovia for years. If you own one of the area's older houses and want to talk through what period-correct restoration is worth when it's time to sell, Chris Reisbeck is glad to compare notes over coffee. Let's Connect.
