2023 Bess Garner Preservation Award - Claremont Graduate University

The Bess Garner Historic Preservation Award celebrates the best of preservation by recognizing individuals and organizations whose contributions demonstrate excellence in historic preservation in the City of Claremont. Claremont’s history is embodied in buildings, structures, sites and objects that provide a tangible link to the people, events and patterns that have shaped Claremont’s growth and development.
The Bess Garner Preservation Award is Claremont Heritage’s highest honor, bestowed with the utmost of care and consideration and only when there is indisputable evidence of superlative achievement in the preservation, interpretation and/or public policy development of our cultural and architectural heritage including buildings, architecture, districts, archeology, cultural landscapes and objects of significance in the history and culture of Claremont.
Claremont Heritage recognizes CGU for the adaptive reuse of the former Huntley Bookstore designed by A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons with a sensitive renovation that retained key character defining features. The restored building is now home to the Yuhaaviatam Center for Health Studies. In addition, Peter Drucker's home in Claremont was added to the National Register of Historic Places for the significance it played in his career. It is where Drucker wrote over two dozen books and entertained many World Leaders. The Peter Drucker home is now an interpretive house museum dedicated to his legacy.