Ojai Valley Inn & Spa

Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. . , This building, known today as the Wallace Neff Heritage Bar, was constructed in 1923 as the clubhouse for the Ojai Valley Country Club, a private golf club conceived by Edward Drummond Libbey, a wealthy glass manufacturer from Toledo, Ohio. Libbey was only one of a number of affluent Eastern industrialists to build a winter home in the valley after the turn of the last century, but his impact on the community, then known as Nordhoff, was singular. In 1917, Libbey reinvented the town as Ojai when he hired the San Diego architectural firm of Frank Mead and Richard Requa to unify the town center with a Mission Revival architectural theme. This was only the most visible of the many transformative developments Libbey promoted for the Ojai Valley. , For his Ojai Valley Country Club project, Libbey hired the then up-and-coming Pasadena architect, Wallace Neff, to design this building as the focal point for his 200-acre golf club. Neff received an Honor Award from the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1923 for this building. During the 1920s and 1930s, he became one of Southern California's most important architectural regionalists. Neff's romantic, historical designs proved especially popular with Hollywood celebrities, many of whom were counted among his clients. , This building, designed in a Spanish Revival style, served as a lounge and dining room for club members, and living quarters for the manager, until 1934, when it was augmented by a hotel. The hotel underwent successive expansions to evolve into today's Ojai Valley Inn and Spa.