2010 Update - Home Savings/Wamu/Chase - The Millard Sheets Pasadena Mural Panic!

Now Chase is lighting up their Colorado and Lake location at night with blue neon!

Here is an update on the Millard Sheets murals which were removed from this location, even though they depicted a Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade scene from the turn of the 20th century! Perhaps we should be boycotting this bank, as they do not seem to respect the community they live in; First Federal was more sensitive in Claremont as you can read in this article: http://pasadenaindependent.com/latest_news/relocation-of-banks-millard-sheets-mural-under-discussion/

Rochelle Branch, City of Pasadena's Manager of Cultural Affairs sends us this email: The mural panels were donated to the Millard Sheets Foundation. Tony Sheets, his son and foundation president, has met with members of PCOC who have expressed a serious interest in exhibiting them there. I believe he has committed to trying to work with them. The family sculpture is still in the bank as from what I understand will stay there.

Here is information on the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts (Millard Sheets Foundation in the above email): http://www.lacountyfair.com/fp/foundations/millardsheets/index.asp

End of update: We have lost some very significant Pasadena-specific public art due to unbridled capitalism, again. Perhaps we should exercise our economic muscle and move our accounts to a local credit union, as we have been advised by many financial experts.

We were alerted that Chase Bank at Lake and Colorado, located in what was Washington Mutual, who inherited art works commissioned by the Ahmanson Corporation, the owners of Home Savings which was originally located at this site, were about to do something nefarious to the Millard Sheets mural panels depicting the Pasadena Tournament of Roses around 1890, located on the walls behind the teller area.











Rochelle Branch, of the Pasadena Cultural Affairs Office was alerted to this by an observant Pasadena Library employee, Catherine Haskett-Hany (here from another blogpost: Pasadena Branch @ Lake and Colorado is now being converted to CHASE and they were about to paint over the mural. Stopped by alert Library employee. Cultural Affairs will follow-up to find a new home. Sculpture also).











You can read about the Home Savings artwork and contribute to its saving by going to this blog, The Home Savings bank art project:


http://adamarenson.wordpress.com/homesavingsbankart/


For those of you who do not know Millard Sheets, he was one of the preeminent local artists of the 20th century and his work is all over the country, including a number of murals in public places.











At the moment, Chase has put the mural behind a wall, so it's not very visible except at the ends. This artwork is monumental and is about 15 feet tall and about 100 feet wide. Unfortunately, I have no picture. I wish I would have taken one when it was fully visible! So let that be a lesson to all of us, don't assume what you see today will be there tomorrow!











Apparently, the sculpture, depicting a man, woman and child, was originally on the corner of Lake and Colorado, in the midst of a fountain. The Home Savings building was demolished in the 1990's and replaced by what you see there now.











If you appreciate something let others know, and if it is in any way historic, let the City's Design and Historic Preservation Department know so we can keep an eye on it and also inform the owners of its value to our community.

The Sad Fate of the Towne Furniture Store Bldg., 854 E. Washington Blvd. and the need for "Edge Repair"

Towne Furniture Store, 854 E. Washington Blvd. in 1947

The Towne Furniture Store just before its demolition in 1985

The Towne Furniture Store was a handsome building as seen in the drawing of the shop in the Pasadena Independent Newspaper dated January 1, 1947. The 1920's commercial building, very much like the remaining historic commercial buildings in the Lake Washington Village area, had a very pleasing ornamental facade, but over the years it succumbed to the decline of the commercial center and was ingloriously covered over with a slab of stucco.

In the end the building was demolished in 1985 to make way for the Food 4 Less Shopping Center parking lot. Nothing remains today except an empty hole of parking spaces just across from the Oversen Building and the Washington Theatre on the north side of Washington Blvd., both landmark buildings.

When we conceived the North Lake Specific Plan for this area in 1997, we proposed that "Edge Repair" would happen to replace the missing buildings on the south side of Washington Blvd. west of North Lake Avenue and also along the west side of North Lake Avenue south of Washington Blvd. along the outer perimeter of the Food 4 Less Shopping Center parking lot. This "Edge Repair" would be done by building "Main Street Architecture" buildings along these perimeters to give an urban edge back to the streetscape. Looking across from the Oversen Building and the Washington Theatre south now, it is a very depressing view of a wide expanse of a parking lot with no buildings to frame the view and not a pleasant or interesting walk for pedestrians.

Lake Washington Village has suffered much from the declines of the 1970's through the 1990's. How do we change the ambiance from check cashing outlets, payday loan shops, storefront churches, liquor stores, filling stations and auto repair into a village of a hardware store, a theater, art galleries, coffee houses, antique shops, nice restaurants, a bike shop and specialty shops, as was once more the case? Did you know that the Union 76 gas station is built on the site of a former popular soda fountain and ice cream shop and that the other two corners had drug stores and the fourth had a Van de Kamp's Bakery?

It will take each and one of us to voice our wishes to the City of Pasadena and our respective neighborhood associations and to the business people we wish to see flourish in our neighborhood Lake Washington Village. We will make it happen!

The Sad Fate of the Pasadena Osteopath Dr. Stewart Fitch Medical Clinic Building

Proposed south elevation on Washington Blvd. showing corner of Los Robles on far left

Washington Blvd. street elevation showing historic neighboring structures


Facing north to the reduced size parking lot

View from Los Robles of the proposed new structure

Street elevations showing the scale, massing and outlines of the neighboring structures

The view from the easterly Queen Anne Victorian and the Washington Bungalow Court

All this, the church's proposed new construction, will be heard at the Design Commission on January 25, 2010, Monday night at 6:00 p.m. at the Permit Center Conference Room




What is there now on the NE corner of Los Robles and Washington, Pasadena, CA

An excerpt from the City's North Los Robles Corridor historic inventory of the early 1980's

Before the New Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church purchased the property in 1989

Deteriorated condition of a historic feature in 2009

Deteriorated historic feature in 2010

Casement windows changed out for aluminum sliders, window blocked up, doors boarded over, condition in 2009

French doors covered over with plywood, condition in 2010

The Sad Fate of the Dr. Stewart Fitch, Doctor of Osteopathy, Medical Clinic Building

Monday night, January 25, 2010, at 6:00 p.m. in the Pasadena Planning Department in a hearing before the Design Commission, the sad fate of the historic Dr. Fitch Medical Clinic will be finally decided and it appears that the 1925 building will be destined for the dust heap and replaced by a modernistic cathedral, ill suited for its historic neighborhood.

The New Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church has submitted plans to build a new sanctuary of 9,960 square feet, three stories tall with a height of 40 feet, of modernistic architecture to replace their historic Spanish Colonial Revival style building of 4,141 square feet which they now use and plan to demolish, historic Catalina tiles, historic Batchelder tile fireplaces, and all.

The Dr. Fitch doctor's clinic was built in 1925 as a house, designed by noted local architect H.E. Terrell and built by W.A. Taylor & Son, who was also the builder of the Myron Hunt designed Pasadena Rose Bowl.

The Spanish Colonial Revival style doctor's office, built in a "U" configuration was purchased by the church in 1989 and has been in a state of "demolition by neglect", with boarded up windows and doors and decaying historic features, in the last nearly 21 years.

The Spanish styling is evident in the gabled tile roof and the smooth stucco walls. The front facade (south side) is symmetrical and the building rests above the street with the lot surrounded by a low arroyo stone wall and a high brick wall with a whitewash finish. A series of steps leads up through wooden gates to the front door. The door has narrow side lights and two metal poles mark where the canvas awning belongs. There is a concrete stoop across the front and grouped French doors open on to this area. The building has a rear entry which is marked by a central gabled pergola with a tile roof. There are several stucco-clad chimneys and the building has casement windows. Numerous trees and bushes surround this building, including palms, cypresses and pines. The brick wall surrounds the corner of the lot forming a terraced landscaped area. The gates of the brick wall are distinctive, being formed of dark-stained wooden planks, each arched at the top and having small round holes.

Originally constructed as a house, as eary as 1931 it was utilized as a doctor's office. Dr. Stewart Fitch, a noted Pasadena osteopath, who lived at 1175 N. Los Robles, had his office here for numerous years.

This will all be just a memory soon, and what is proposed to replace it does not seem to fit the historic context of the neighborhood, with an immediately adjacent Queen Anne Victoria style bungalow and a National Register listed bungalow court and the Normandie Heights Landmark District.

Please take a look at the architectural renderings provided by the church and determine whether you think this design fits this prominent corner in our neighborhood. If you don't show up at the Design Commission meeting this Monday evening, January 25, 2010, then by default the church and the architect will say you have no problem with their plans for this modernistic sanctuary in our historic neighborhood. If you absolutely cannot attend the meeting, please send an email to the responsible planner by noon on Monday. His name is Kevin Johnson and his email is kevinjohnson@cityofpasadena.net. Let your voice and opinion be heard.

NEW YEAR GREETINGS FROM THE ECHO MOUNTAIN HOUSE!

ECHO MOUNTAIN HOUSE OF THE WHITE CITY, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

(Oil on canvas, courtesy of the Armitrading Foundation - Mount Lowe collection)

Built by Professor T.S.C. Lowe in 1894 on Echo Mountain summit, the terminus of the Great Mount Lowe Incline Railway, the Echo Mountain House was a grand resort hotel in the style of Belle Epoque luxury, something never seen again in the Western United States after it burned to the ground in 1900, a sad loss to our beautiful mountain at the top of Lake Avenue.

The searchlight, purchased by Professor Lowe from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, was the strongest of its day, and was said to be able to illuminate a newspaper to be read at night in faraway Catalina Island. This was not the only artifact of the 1893 Columbian Exposition to end up in the area of Pasadena and Altadena. The McNally mansion has a Turkish Smoking Room Tower, puchased by Mr. McNally from the Turkish Pavilion at the fair and shipped and installed in his mansion in Altadena. The script on the ceiling of the smoking room appears in Arabic script and has been undecipherable to readers of Arabic, because it is in Turkish, since the Ottoman Empire used the Arabic script to write Turkish until Ataturk reformed and Europeanized the modern Turkish state after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, this being in the 1920's. Another hidden mystery of our ancient resort city.

Can this monumental historic hotel rise from the ashes? We hope to live long enough to see this beautiful monument to Professor Lowe's achievements be rebuilt, however, this time with fire sprinklers! They have rebuilt the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and they are in the process of rebuilding the demolished Imperial Castle in Berlin (Berliner Stadtschloss), so why should we not have our Belle Epoque resort hotel back? I'm looking forward to sitting on a late summer's eve on the long front porch in a rocking chair, sipping a cool drink, with the valley floor's lights twinkling. We stayed a while back in a surviving similar resort hotel in the Great Smoky Mountains called the Balsam Inn and it was enchanting! http://www.balsammountaininn.com/photogallery/index.htm

Here is to the future and a New Year!

LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNT LOWE - UP LAKE AVENUE!

After the last rain the clover is beginning to sprout again and the elves and mushrooms are about. When I turn around and look towards the mountains I see Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe, actually visible from my bedroom and living room windows! This shot epitomizes my interests: historic architecture, Colonial Revival Moderne style, 1950's sports cars, czecho-germanic-anglophile culture, travel, trees and blue sky thinking.

Normandie Cottage is a lot of work to keep running, being 1924 vintage and my having so little time at the moment to give it attention. The 1958 Austin Healey 100-6 is also a lot of work to keep running, as well. As a matter of fact, trying to keep myself running, vintage 1950, is a lot of work.

Some of us still believe and hope we might bring back this part of town to what it was almost a hundred years ago. A small group of enthusiasts actually believe we may see the reconstruction of the Mount Lowe Incline Railway and the reinstallation of trolleys up and down Lake Avenue, taking tourists to a rebuilt Mount Lowe Alpine Tavern hotel at Crystal Springs, all this happening within the next 20 years or so.

First we must have a grand reopening of the restored Washington Theatre and the establishment of a Lake Washington Village Arts District. All good things take time. Let me know if you want to get involved to bring back the economic vitality of the old tourist days. Up Lake Avenue can be a vacation destination for all once again, as it once was.

LOURDES OF THE WEST, 1879 NORTH LAKE AVENUE

Photo is dated December 25, 1939. "Lourdes of the West" was built in 1939 as "an exact replica of the beautiful and historic Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, on the grounds of St. Elizabeth's Church in Altadena where it is attracting thousands of war anchored tourists, who are choosing the colorful Southern California vacationland in lieu of Europe this year. Photo shows the grotto at Altadena which encases statues of "Our Lady of Lourdes, the Virgin" and St. Bernadette, the little shepherdess to whom the Virgin appeared on 18 occasions, once commanding her to scratch the ground with her foot, where a healing spring burst forth, from which waters the spring at the foot of the "Lourdes of the West" has been created." It was built partly out of lava and greeted 300,000 visitors in nine months.

This is a magical place and recently renovated including the two garden entrance way gates which have "Lourdes of the West" in illuminated cut out letters in the decorative metal archway overhead. The St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish hosts an old time family festival in October on a Saturday evening where wonderful food and classic fair rides and games are hosted. Not to be missed; look for the banner advertising this coming festival at the southwest corner of New York Drive and North Lake.

At night, the flickering votive candles in the grotto give an eerie but peaceful feeling to the contemplative. One of several hidden gardens on Lake Avenue and a spot for reflection.

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 1757 NORTH LAKE AVENUE LANDMARK

Here we have another Pasadena official landmark on North Lake Avenue, the French gothic style inspired Westminster Presbyterian Church designed by famed Pasadena architect Sylvanus Marston in 1925 as he was part of the Marston, Van Pelt and Maybury architectural firm which existed from 1922 to 1927, after Marston spent time in France during World War I, where he received inspiration from the French cathedrals. This is surely the most French European of cathedrals in Pasadena and it has a grand rose window on its south side, a sublime interior and a magnificent tower which can be seen for miles around. One could feel almost like being in Paris' Notre Dame during the Christmas Eve candlelight service in this wonderful treasure of a space.

This building has been used for filming a number of times including 1953 big screen version of the War of the Worlds where the church is seen silhouetted with Martian multi-colored blasts behind it. It was recently used for the 2008 Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie where it stood in for a German Catholic cathedral with its roof bombed and missing courtesy of CGI.

Truly a structure of magnificence on Lake Avenue. The photo is from 1939. With the undergrounding of the utilities on Lake Avenue we have very much enhanced the beauty of the street from that aspect. This gives us hope for the future that we might still be able to make major aestethic improvements to our boulevard. The ornamental streetlights are the same on this stretch from Woodbury to Howard that have been here since the 1920's. Someone thought it wise to remove the remaining ornamental light posts from Howard to the city center and replace them with much inferior light standards during the 1970's. We were lucky to replace the ornamental light standards once more from Howard to the 210 bridge in recent times, albeit they are just single headed rather than double headed.

More to come on the towers of Lake Avenue

LAKE AVENUE SNOW, JANUARY 11, 1949

This photo shows the heaviest snow which has fallen in Pasadena in the 20th century, on January 11, 1949, when 6" fell on Lake Avenue and 12" higher up in the foothills. This picture was taken from the Santa Fe railroad track crossing between Maple and Curson, what is now in the middle of the 210 Freeway, looking north to Maple, with the original Lake Avenue Congregational Church sanctuary on the Northwest corner of Maple and Lake, with its steeple hidden in the low lying mist.

The Fox Market, a well known market on the Southwest corner of Maple and Lake is just across from the Lake Avenue Congregational Church. None of these buildings exist anymore due to the construction of the 210 Freeway.

Notice the historic street light fixtures which had a high mast in the middle to support the cross wires for the Pacific Electric Short Line overhead catenary above the track which was in the middle of Lake all the way up to Altadena, but were removed by this time.

The 210 Freeway divided Pasadena even more than the railroad tracks had before it. Now instead of being on the other side of the tracks, the rest of Pasadena is on the other side of the freeway, without the connection of the Pacific Electric trolleys or the lure of the mountains which at one time proved more irresistible to tourists than now. At least our mountains are not as congested with people as they once were and it's possible to wander the trails without seeing many hikers from out of the area and most everyone is local, especially during the week.

Will we ever see such a snow again? Will we ever have such main street architecture on Lake Avenue again? When we were planning the North Lake Avenue Gold Line Station, we had proposed the bridge where it's located to be more like the Rialto Bridge in Venice, with room for shops and businesses. The North Lake 210 Freeway Bridge was widened, but no provision for shops and businesses was built into the structure. Perhaps this will happen in the future. Could you imagine a flower shop, a newstand, a tobacco shop on this bridge? More unlikely things have happened. If we can imagine a great bridge like the Rialto in Venice, we can have one here, also.

UNION BANK PLAZA, CORDOVA TO DEL MAR, SOUTH LAKE AVENUE, 1965

This is the architectural model of the Union Bank Plaza under construction in 1965 on the westside of South Lake Avenue between Cordova and Del Mar, which was to eventually include an eight-story office tower, hotel medical complex, a pedestrian bridge over Cordova connecting to the next block to the north. Most of this was built as designed; it was known later as the Jacobs Engineering Complex for a very long time, being named after its major tenant, and Union Bank moved away in the 1990's. William L. Pereira and Associates were the architects of Union Bank Plaza and this photo is dated 6.13.65.

The building of this complex took out many single family homes in this block that had survived on South Lake into the 1960's, with a few still surviving even longer, such as the Craftsman home housing the Japanese owned " Lake Florist " just south of what was the Wells Fargo Bank Tower at Green and Lake and just north of what is now Smitty's Restaurant. " Port O' Call " high end gift shop, a Pasadena intstitution, was located in a large Craftsman home farther down on Lake directly across from Continental Burger. Both these homes have been demolished in the meantime to make room for new developments. One home which still remains is where the speakeasy style bar " Magnolia " is located, just south of the Mobil Station at San Pascual and Lake, sharing the space with Heller & Company coin dealer, a business which I have never seen open in the last twenty years. The front of the bungalow is covered over with retail box construction, but you can see the house from the area of the gas station or from inside " Magnolia " where a tree grows in front of the bar.

The one story 1960's modernistic bank building on the northwest corner of Cordova and Lake was demolished in the 1990's and the entire south end of the block is now covered with new development. Many notable 1960's buildings in the South Lake Shopping and Financial District have been threatened with demolition or significant alteration, erasing interesting architecture on this stretch of Lake Avenue.