Updated:
February, 22, 2007
llis Miller, the only child of Frank and Isabella Miller, was born in the Glenwood Hotel in 1882. She had an extraordinary childhood. The Glenwood Hotel was her home and her playground.
Living at the Glenwood Hotel and, later, the Mission Inn, provided Allis with the opportunity to meet many famous people. President Theodore Roosevelt, Henry E. Huntington, John D. Rockefeller, magician Harry Houdini, Swedish prince Gustavus Adolphus, Susan B. Anthony (a distant cousin of Allis’ uncle, Frank Richardson), and Albert Einstein were among the many guests (Hall, 2000).
During the construction of the Mission Inn, Allis’ father planned to have the original family home torn down. She persuaded him to not destroy the home of her birth. He ultimately remodeled it to match the Mission Revival style of architecture and renamed it the Old Adobe.
Allis Miller loved to travel. In 1893, she visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with her parents (Lech and Johnson). After she married, she continued to travel and collect items for the hotel. She had a great love of bells, and this fascination deeply affected the hotel. The Millers ultimately collected almost eight hundred bells for the Mission Inn (Moore, 1998).
While her father was still alive, Allis managed the Cloister Gift Shop (Klotz, 1982). Guests could purchase several publications related to the Mission Inn authored by Mission Inn curator Francis Borton, Allis, and her husband, DeWitt Hutchings. Following her father’s death, Allis and her husband took a more active role in the operation of the hotel. The travel industry had changed dramatically since Frank Miller opened his new hotel in 1903, and the couple needed to update the hotel accordingly. They removed the "Old Adobe" in 1948 to accommodate the "El Agua Azul," a swimming pool complete with racing lanes and diving boards (Klotz, 1982). They also added a new entrance on the Orange Street side of the building to increase access to the hotel lobby, and opened the South Seas-inspired Lea Lea Room in December, 1939 (Klotz, 1982). Allis Hardenberg Hutchings died in 1952; her husband passed away four months later, in 1953.
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