"All of my family's from out of town," Bakersfield resident Alexis Wimes told SFGATE. Wimes and a companion ducked into the Padre bar during a mid-July heat wave to enjoy some strawberry-themed cocktails. "When I got married, like for our wedding party, it was the place to stay. It's pretty iconic. We did our wedding photos on top of the parking garage across the way. The Padre sign was in the background."
It's not difficult to see why the Padre has been called the "finest hotel west of the Rockies." Aesthetically, the Spanish Revival concrete block is the surviving thing that anchors Bakersfield's downtown. It's almost a century old, with a building that came to life during the late 1920s, opening its doors to anticipatory crowds in late 1928.
Back then, the Padre represented how a real estate and oil boom in and around Bakersfield had buoyed the town and made the region. "Surveys for the Padre Hotel. Bakersfield's eight-story hostelry, to be erected on the northwest corner of Eighteenth and H streets, have been completed by engineers..."
Collection
[
|
...
]