Ontario’s newest downtown restaurant, Mule Car Smokehouse, opened in June 2024 after many unavoidable delays. Located in the original Bank of Italy (later Richard’s Beauty College) and Bumstead’s Bicycles buildings on the northeast corner of B Street and Euclid Avenue, the adaptive reuse project was started in 2019 by two developers, builders and restauranteurs from Glendale, Alex Baroian and Martin Hovsepian. They purchased the building from the City of Ontario and began what turned out to be a major renovation on a scale not originally imagined.
What we now know as the Bank of Italy building was originally built by Security State Bank. It was designed to be a “handsome structure”, one of the most attractive in all of San Bernardino County. The bank opened to the public on March 24, 1923. The Daily Report covered the event and declared “the transformation of an ugly spot into one of the most beautiful business corners on the famous Euclid Avenue is an achievement in which the whole City may well take pride.”
Just two months later, on May 28, 1923, Security State Bank was taken over by the Bank of Italy after information surfaced about some of Security State Bank’s questionable loan practices. Secondo Guasti, founder of the Italian Vineyard Company, became bank president. On September 3, 1930, the Bank of Italy changed its name to Bank of America.
After the Bank of Italy relocated to the Citizen’s Bank Building on the northwest corner of Euclid Avenue and Holt Boulevard in 1942, the building housed a salon and a ladies dress shop until 1960 when Richard’s Beauty School took over. The new owner incorporated the building housing Bumstead’s Bicycles on East B Street into the bank building when Bumstead’s moved to its new location on Lemon Avenue in 1960. Richard’s Beauty College made significant alterations to the façade of the building by plastering over its original brickwork.
Richard’s Beauty College closed in 2005, leaving the building vacant. Over the next three years, the building fell into disrepair. In 2008 the City of Ontario purchased it for $966,000 and designated it an historic landmark. It took eleven more years before Ontario found a developer committed to both historic preservation and adaptive reuse.
Despite setbacks due to COVID-19, unforeseen problems in the original connection between the Bank of Italy and Bumstead’s Bicycles buildings and significant changes in building codes over 100 years, the current owners persisted in driving the restoration and remodeling project to a successful conclusion. And to honor Ontario’s history, Alex and Martin named their restaurant Mule Car Smokehouse.
Ontario Mule Car
Today, the picturesque 7-mile trip up Euclid Avenue — north from the intersection of B Street Boulevard and Euclid in Ontario to the foothills of San Antonio Heights — takes about 20 minutes by car and includes an elevation rise of over 1,000 feet. Some 125 years ago, the trip took considerably longer but offered foothills residents a ride on a unique public transit system that used a cheap, clean and dependable form of energy – two mules.
As part of its early planning, the Ontario Land Company built a standard-gauge steel railway in the middle of Euclid Avenue, intending it to be a public transportation system offering residents a way to commute between the grove, vineyard and mining jobs in the northern foothills of Upland and the bustling commercial center of downtown Ontario near the Southern Pacific Rail Road line. It was to be powered by electricity generated from the flow of water from San Antonio Canyon. But when it became evident that this would not be possible for technical reasons, a substitute method was found: a mule car.
In 1888, the Ontario & San Antonio Heights Rail Road innovated the Gravity Mule Car trolley that two types of power. A mule drew the trolley north along the tree-lined Euclid median from downtown Ontario to San Antonio Heights’ 24th Street in a trip that took about 90 minutes. Once the northbound passengers disembarked and southbound passengers boarded for the return trip, the mule was loaded onto a special cart on the rear of the trolley for a speedy 30-minute jaunt back to Ontario powered by nothing more than gravity.
By 1895, technology had evolved so that the original plan to use electricity to power the trolley became feasible. The mule cars were retooled to run on electricity, and the mules, Sanky and Moody, were sold to farmer C.B. Adams in San Antonio Heights.
According to historian Joseph Beeman, when Adams tried to get Sanky and Moody to pull a harrow (a plow with many steel spikes used in local orchards), the mules refused to budge. To get them moving, Adams got a bell from the old rail car and attached it to his harrow. Ringing it helped. According to a report on the death of Sanky that appeared on the front page of the Ontario Daily Report of February 6, 1914, “With the familiar signal, the mules started valiantly up the orchard. But at the head of the orchard, Moody and Sanky persisted in attempting to climb onto the harrow for the downward journey,” said the article. It was weeks before the pair could be persuaded to plow in both directions. The article concluded with the information that Moody “preceded his partner to ‘mule heaven’ some four years ago. Sanky,” the article assured us, “will be given a fitting burial.”
In 1956, a group of citizens headed by William Richardson had a replica of the original car constructed by the prop department of MGM Studios who worked from old photos. The car was debuted for the City’s 75th anniversary in 1957. Yet, after the celebration, the car was relegated to the city yard for nearly two decades. However, in 1974, longtime civic leaders Elinore and Clifford Clarence “Kip” Carlson decided undertake restoration of the mule car as a memorial to their 22-yearold son Donald who worked for the City of Ontario and died of a rare blood disorder in 1972. Together with friends, the Carlsons also built a glass protective structure for the mule car which was installed on the median at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and B Street. The Carlsons dedicated it to “the whole community.”
The electric-powered train was operated by the Ontario Electric Company from 1895 to 1908, when ownership passed to the Pacific Light & Power Corporation, and then to Southern Pacific in 1912 where it became the Pacific Electric Ontario and San Antonio Heights Line. The rail line continued service until 1928 when the popularity of automobiles and buses made it incapable of covering its operating costs, let alone make a profit.
Sources: Foothills Reader, Kent Crowley, December 7, 2014 and September 13, 2015; Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Joe Blackstock, January 28, 2014