Downtown Pasadena's Early Architecture

At sunset, the San Gabriel Mountains form a rosy sculptural
backdrop for Pasadena, a city of stately street trees and lush
gardens. Attracted by a paradisiacal climate, health seekers
and wealthy Easterners flocked to its resort hotels--the Green, the Maryland, the Huntington, the Painter, the Raymond--and built grand residences along Orange Grove and Grand Avenues. Scores of commercial and industrial buildings rose downtown, punctuated by public works, civic buildings, schools, and churches that doubled as works of art, like the Colorado Street Bridge, the Christian Science Church, and the California Mediterranean-style city hall. Preservation efforts have succeeded in putting Old Pasadena and the Pasadena Civic Center on the National Register of Historic Places, and continued restoration has made the city's unique architectural treasures a major attraction in Southern California.

Author Ann Scheid, who also wrote Crown of the Valley: An Illustrated History, Historic Pasadena, and The Valley Hunt Club: 100 Years, is uniquely qualified to guide readers on this pictorial journey. Currently the archivist for the Greene and Greene Archives, maintained by the Gamble House/USC at the Huntington Library, she draws on her impressive background in design and preservation planning to set the itinerary for this entertaining stroll through downtown Pasadena, from its beginnings through the early 20th century, using images from the Pasadena Museum of History, the University of Southern California, and other collections.