Culture and Neutra in Claremont

Beginnings

A group of local citizens joined together in the late 1920s and purchased about 2,000 acres of hillside land. One member, Sarah Bixby Smith, named the area Padua Hills because it reminded her of Mt. San Antonio in Italy, which overlooks the town of Padua.

During the next few years, the investors discussed several uses for the Padua property. By 1930, they had decided to build a theater for the local Community Players. Padua Hills Inc. was formed, and Herman H. Garner was selected to head the new organization.

The Community Players fell on tough times in the Great Depression. But in 1937 Garner's wife, Bess, had the idea of using the theater as a "dinner theater" for the Mexican Players, a group of waiters and waitresses of Mexican descent who worked in the theater's dining room and wanted to perform folk plays and offer authentic music and dance from different regions of Mexico. The Mexican Players continued performing until the theater closed in 1974.

The building and surrounding hillsides were donated to Pomona College — Herman Garner's alma mater — but later sold to the city of Claremont as part of a deal to set aside land for a wilderness park and pave the way for residential development.

Today, the city leases the property to a catering service that runs wedding receptions at the hilltop site. The Spanish Colonial house the Garners lived in is still standing in Memorial Park in Claremont's village district.





Drawing card

Rustic Padua Hills is bounded on its western side by the 1,400-acre Claremont Hills Wilderness Park, which has hiking trails and bicycle paths. Farther up Mt. Baldy Road, past Padua Hills, there's a trout pond and ski slopes on the 10,064-foot-high Mt. Baldy.

Modernist architect Richard Neutra, who designed a home in the community, influenced the style of many of the single-family homes in Padua Hills. His homes have huge windows with floor-to-ceiling glass, making it appear that the heavily wooded hillsides extend inside.

In the early 1960s, Padua Hills resident Domingo Paglia went to work for Neutra. When the Neutra-designed house became available for $400,000 in 1999, the 71-year-old retired architect and his wife jumped at it.

"We bid on the house without seeing it," Paglia said.

Wildlife also is a feature of the community. Sightings of a bear and her two cubs have been reported.





Insider's view

For decades, Padua Hills was an artists' colony that promoted arts, culture and entertainment at the theater. Claremont is working with preservationists to raise nearly $2 million in grants to renovate the dinner theater and attract a multicultural troupe to the spot. About a quarter of the money raised has come from the city, California cultural and historical endowments and the J. Paul Getty Trust.