The City of Napa and the greater Napa Valley have a history that harkens back centuries. The first know inhabitants of the area were the Native Americans, specifically the Wappo. Archeological evidence suggests that the Wappo lived in the Napa Valley for ten millennia, developing small communities of pole houses. Yet, the first settlers of European descent arrived in the early 19th century, led by the Franciscan friar, Padre José Altimira. The founder of the Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, Altimira was on a mission to convert the local populace to Christianity. While some were converted by Altimira’s party, most perished from exposure to the foreign diseases that had accompanied the priests. And when Mexico finally ended the mission system in the early 1830s, most of the remaining Native Americans began to work alongside landless Mexican settlers for estate owners known as the “Californios.” The Californios introduced largescale cattle ranching in Napa Valley, as well as wheat growing. American settlers from the East Coast began to arrive toward the end of the decade, gradually turning into a flood once California became a territory of the United States. Among the first Americans to settle in the Napa Valley was George Yount, who had actually received a land grant from a Mexican official by the name of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Becoming the first American horticulturalist in the area, Yount successfully built positive relations with the remaining Native Americans and was influential in local politics. Another important transplant was Nathan Combs, who had traveled west shortly before the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. He worked for Nicholas Higuera, a Californio that possessed one of the largest estates in the valley. In exchange for his servitude, Higuera eventually awarded Combs with a sizeable tract of land that he could call his own.

In 1847, Combs laid out a street grid upon which to create a magnificent city that he would call “Napa.” Combs and a fellow settler named James M. Hudspeth then surveyed the area, selecting some 600 yards of land near the Napa River to serve as the nascent community’s downtown district. The very first businesses opened within a matter of months, starting with the saloon of a former grist mill operator named Harrison Pierce. And in 1851, the newly recognized state government of California assigned Napa to serve as the seat for Napa County. But the city did not truly mature until the California Gold Rush incited a population boon that lasted right up until the beginning of the American Civil War. Struggling to survive in the countryside during the winter months, many prospective gold miners sought refuge in the accommodations that lined Main Street. As the gold mines proved worthless, many disillusioned miners turned to other industries. Most either opened a business permanently in downtown Napa, or went to work for those new business owners. Soon enough, factories, workshops, and storefronts proliferated throughout the city. Perhaps one of the greatest operation to open in downtown Napa at the time was the Sawyer Tanning Company, which became the largest tannery west of the Mississippi River! At first, the Napa River served as the primary way for local merchants and industrialists to ship their goods to other places across California. Steamships often traveled downstream to San Francisco, with the 147-foot Amelia (owned by Albert E. Hatt) the greatest of them all. Then, in 1868, the first railroad arrived, allowing for even more freight traffic to reach destinations all over the state.

The State of California formally incorporated Napa as a city during the early 1870s, signifying its status as the de-facto capital of the Napa Valley region. Napa was home to all kinds of bustling industries by the dawn of the 20th century, including the Napa Glove Factory, which was the largest plant of its kind in the western United States. Yet, another important economic development unfolded just to the north of city around the same time. Dozens of farmers began planting orchards and vineyards, giving rise to many commercial wineries. By 1889, more than 140 professional wineries were in operation, including the likes of Schramsberg, Beringer, and Inglenook. Yet, a surplus of grapes briefly toppled the market in the early 1900s, before Prohibition completely shut down the industry in 1920. Fortunately, the wineries slowly came back to life when the Roosevelt administration repealed the 18th Amendment in 1933. Some of the historic facilities were resurrected, such as Inglenook, Beaulieu Vineyards, and the Charles Krug Winery. But new wineries also debuted, as well, including Louis M. Martini’s celebrated facility. Much of the lighter industries in Napa started serving the reopened wineries, too, which reinforced the economic relationship between the city and the countryside. Today, the Napa’s Wine Country is among the most visited destinations on the planet, with dozens of world-renowned wineries available to experience. Napa itself is now one of the best resort communities in the world, and it is just over an hour away from places like San Francisco and Oakland.

The Napa River Inn possesses a unique architectural style that can best be described as “eclectic.” Dating to the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, historians today consider “eclecticism” to be part of a much larger movement to fuse together a variety of historical designs. Earlier in the 1800s, architects—particularly those in Europe—decided to rely upon their own loose interpretations of historical architecture whenever they attempted to replicate it. Such a practice appeared within such styles as Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Second Empire architecture. But at the height of the Gilded Age, those architects wanted to use historic architecture more literally when developing a building. A few architects went a step further by combining certain historical styles together to achieve something uniquely beautiful. And in some cases, those individuals felt inspired to add a new historical form onto a building that they were renovating—just like the Hatt Building at the time. Ultimately, the architects felt that joining such architectural forms together would give them a new avenue of expression that they otherwise did not have at the time. They also believed that they had stayed true to the earlier forms, so long as their designs perfectly replicated whatever it was they to mimicked.

In Europe, this approach first appeared as a rehash of Gothic Revival-style known as “Collegiate Gothic.” The European architects then used such a mentality to influence the unfolding philosophies of both the Beaux-Arts school of design, as well as the emerging Renaissance Revival-style. Many architects in America followed suit, the most notable of which being Richard Morris Hunt and Charles Follen McKim. The American architects who embraced “eclecticism” were at first interested in the country’s colonial architecture. Much of the desire to return to the time period was born from the revived interest in American culture brought on by the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Pride in preserving the nation’s heritage inspired the architects to perfect the design principles of their colonial forefathers in new and intriguing ways. This interest gradually splintered into other revival styles, though, like Spanish Colonial and Tudor Revival. Some Americans even infused the approach with the popular Beaux-Arts aesthetics of France, such as Hunt and McKim. Yet, the birth of Modernism in the 1920s and 1930s eventually ended the worldwide love affair with “eclecticism,” for architects throughout the West became more enchanted with the ideas of modernity, technology, and progress.