Overview

This two-floor, masonry office and store building housed some of Pomona's most important businesses and institutions during the 1880s and 1890s, including an early bank and the city's first library.

Building History

One of Pomona's earliest banks had its first offices in the Ruth Building, beginning in 1883.

Building Notes

Between 1887 and 1892, the Pomona Public Library maintained a single reading room in the Ruth Building. According to the Pomona Public Library's web site: “The Library was open for three hours, two afternoons per week, and the collection consisted of 400 books.” (See Pomona Public Library.org, “Library History,” accessed 06/29/2020.) It moved to the Union Block at 2nd Street and Thomas Street in 1892.

In 1889, C.E. Conner, M.D., who had just moved to Pomona, CA, leased office space in the Ruth Block. (See “Personal Notes, Locations, Etc.” The California Homeopath, vol. VII, no. 5, 05/1889, p. 169.)

PCAD id: 23504