Padre Hotel
hotel in Bakersfield, California

The Padre Hotel is a historical landmark hotel located on the corner of 18th and H streets in Bakersfield, California. Originally constructed in 1928 as a luxury hotel and restaurant, the eight-story building went through an extensive renovation and reopened in 2010.
History
Originally built in 1928, the eight-story Spanish Colonial Revival hotel had an auspicious and flamboyant beginning in the Central Valley's early and notorious oil rush days, but none quite so colorful as that of Milton “Spartacus” Miller, who purchased The Padre in 1954. For the next 45 years, he did spirited battle with Bakersfield's city fathers over a myriad of issues, even mounting a fake missile on the roof, defiantly directed at City Hall with no small disdain. Miller died in 1999.
A fire on the seventh floor in the 1950s resulted in many deaths, including children. There have also been many suicides from the roof of the Padre Hotel.
The Padre Hotel fell into disrepair and was a derelict hotel from the 1960s until its most recent renovation in 2010. Prior to that renovation, the upper floors were condemned but often had squatters occupying the rooms. The bar downstairs stayed open.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Padre Hotel” is hotel in Bakersfield, California. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Padre, Hotel and hotel, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7123937. Authority coordinates are 35.375, -119.022. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2010, 1954 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Padre Hotel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.