Once Viewed as a ‘Metaphor of America,’ Pasadena Now Adjusts to Modern World
Pasadena is said to mean “valley” or “crown of the valley” in the language of the Chippewa Indians--a tribe from the upper Midwest that probably never came within 1,000 miles of Southern California.
Another Indian tribe, the Hagamognas, did live along the Arroyo Seco in what is now Pasadena until they were subjugated by the Spaniards in the late 1700s and were forced to work for the San Gabriel Mission.
Part of the mission lands later became the Rancho San Pascual, which changed ownership many times before ending up in the hands of the Indiana Colony of California in 1873.
These “relatively simple people from the Middle West,” as they were described by retired Caltech history professor Rod Paul, were soon joined by “health seekers, mainly tuberculars and asthmatics, who came in search of a better climate.”
Agricultural Community
The Indiana Colony soon broke up but was reorganized as the San Gabriel Orange Grove Assn. and prospered in the citrus and olive business. When Pasadena was incorporated in 1886--primarily to force its only saloon to close--it was still primarily an agricultural community.
The late 1880s and early 1890s brought the arrival of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads, and Pasadena’s transformation began. Large resort hotels were built, and Pasadena became a winter vacation haven for wealthy Midwesterners, including David B. Gamble of Procter & Gamble, and William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum king.
The arrival of the wealthy led to a flowering of the arts and architecture. In his recent book, “Inventing the Dream,” historian Kevin Starr wrote that turn-of-the century Pasadenans “pursued the pleasures of the genteel tradition--art, music, poetry, painting, history, literature and, of course, the outdoors.”
None expressed the ethos of early 20th-Century Pasadena better than Ohio-born architects Charles and Henry Greene, who designed a series of beautiful homes, in what came to be called the Craftsman style, for the city’s prosperous residents.
City Was ‘a Daydream’
“Their homes, like Pasadena, were metaphors of an America brought to liberality, simplicity and taste,” Starr wrote. “For architects and clients alike, Pasadena was a liberal, Protestant, upper-middle-class daydream--a daydream occurring in the Edwardian Tiffany years before the First World War, when money and fantasy, for the upper-middle class at least, still sustained a direct rate of exchange.”
In search of winter diversions, some of these rich vacationers organized the Valley Hunt Club and, clad in red coats and other hunting regalia, pursued coyotes through the foothills.
The first Tournament of Roses was held in 1890 and its final event was a chariot race, in the “Ben Hur” style, until 1916, when the first Rose Bowl football game was played.
The WPA Guide to 1930s California called Pasadena “the richest city per capita in America,” but those days are long gone. The 1980 census found that Pasadena’s median household income was lower than Burbank’s or Glendale’s.
‘Historical Blacks’
The winter migrants also brought their servants, some of whom were black. There are now third-, fourth- and even fifth-generation black families in Pasadena. Some call themselves the “historical blacks” and carefully distinguish themselves from the black professionals who moved into the city, and into adjacent Altadena, after World War II. Both groups try to distance themselves from the low-income blacks who are crowded into the northwestern part of the city.
After the Depression, many of the winter visitors never returned and the great hotels began to decline.
The Huntington (originally called the Wentworth) now stands mostly empty, as its owners decide whether to invest the money needed to bring the main building up to earthquake safety standards. The Green has been converted to co-op apartments and senior citizen housing. The Vista del Arroyo now houses the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Raymond burned down.
But many of the fine homes remain. The city’s urban conservation staff recently compiled a list of more than 50 structures that were designed in whole or in part by the Greene brothers--and attempts to demolish them meet with fierce resistance from preservationists.
Arts Still Flourish
The arts still flourish, at least fitfully.
The city has its own symphony orchestra and chamber orchestra.
The Pasadena Playhouse, where many prominent actors got their start, has recently reopened, with high hopes for success.
Ambassador College, founded in 1947 to train ministers for the late Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, now is better known for an excellent concert series, presented in the garish, but acoustically excellent, Ambassador Auditorium.
Chamber music concerts, lectures and other cultural events are presented regularly at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium.
The Norton Simon Museum houses an excellent collection of Old Masters and modern art, but how long these works will remain in Pasadena is questionable.
Simon’s relations with the city have not been good since he took over the failing Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in 1974, renamed the museum, installed his own collection and chased out the Pasadena Art Alliance, described by one of its own members as “a bunch of ladies in tennis dresses who would stop off on their way to Valley Hunt (Club) to make trouble for the staff.”
Now 79 and ailing, Simon is said to be considering the transfer of his collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum, which could leave Pasadena with a handsome, empty museum at the western entrance to the city, and with a considerable void in its cultural life.
