California Bungalows : Historic Residences on Altadena Tour
A few years ago, when nonprofit organizations discovered what realtors had known all along, that people will go to any lengths to see how others live, the local “look-in” phenomena began.
It nearly peaked in February when the Projects Council of the Museum of Contemporary Art asked $125 a person for an art and architecture tour.
Now, the International Guiding Eyes Foundation has secured two of the best examples of the California bungalow style in its neighborhood, or any neighborhood, for a home tour in Altadena next Sunday. Other homes, in Victorian and Craftsman styles, are included.
The self-guided tours will be held between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., and the $10 tickets, good for all five Altadena houses, may be obtained at any one of the houses.
Foundation publicist Jane Brackman was able to persuade her husband that their Keyes bungalow’s living and dining rooms, kitchen and sleeping porch were house tour material.
Open for First Time
Brackman and tour chairman Debbie Hemela convinced Rita Benziger, a resident of Mariposa Street’s “Millionaire’s Row” since 1920, and Desdy Kellogg, an artist and equestrian who owns a historic bungalow on Scripps Place, to open their properties for the first time.
Architects Arthur and Alfred Heineman’s 1910 Parsons house, moved from Los Robles Avenue and California Boulevard in Pasadena, will be open.
Another residence, once the home of a physician for the New York Vanderbilt family, has one of the largest sitting rooms in any Craftsman bungalow. Like all the homes on the tour that were built in the Craftsman era, it has a fireplace constructed with Ernest Batchelder tile.
The Keyes home is as sprawling as a house can be and still meet architectural historian Robert Winter’s bungalow criteria. This historian will not abide a two-story bungalow, unless the second floor has just one room, a sleeping porch.
Given Landmark Status
The landmark status of the Keyes house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was granted in part because it is considered to be one of the country’s best examples of the “airplane bungalow” style, so called because of the house’s roof line.
The 3,200-square-foot house was built for $5,500 in 1911, and through the years, paint and wall-to-wall carpeting were added with abandon.
It has taken 14 years and two families to return the Keyes house to its arts and crafts origins. Changes were being made until last week, when a meandering concrete path was poured and the sleeping porch outfitted with 34 new casement windows.
Leather-seated rockers are pulled before the inglenook-fireplace in the living room as if the original owner, Frank Keyes, might come in the door any moment.
Breathtaking View
“The Craftsman ideal, that the home is a place of peace and comfort, is exemplified by the sleeping porch windows,” Brackman says. “The view of the Sierra Madre is probably as breathtaking from our second floor as it is from Elena Scripps Kellogg’s studio.”
The studio remains much as it was in 1914, when it was designed by Charles W. Buchanan, the same architect who designed the Kellogg family home, known as Highlawn. Highlawn is gone, demolished a quarter-century ago when Elena’s mother, Florence Scripps Kellogg, died.
Desdy Kellogg, the wife of Florence’s grandson, William C., was determined that the studio would not experience the same fate. When her husband’s Aunt Elena died at the age of 91, Desdy Kellogg purchased the studio.
“I couldn’t tolerate the inevitiability of someone partitioning the living room and stuccoing the studio over,” Kellogg said. “I believe the studio has the privacy and dignity the community had when the wealthy still lived on Millionaire’s Row.”
Left Aunt’s Artwork
After she donated her aunt’s Oriental furnishings to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Kellogg installed a heating system and updated the kitchen. From the adjacent family home, Scripps Hall, she brought in a pool table and hand-painted murals. She has left her aunt’s artwork as it was, propped against the huge fireplace and hanging from the redwood walls.
Stepping into the redwood paneled room, with beams 18 feet above, is like stepping into the Arroyo culture of the early 20th Century.
The best way to get to it, located as it is on a block-long cul-de-sac at 2764 Scripps Place, is to park on Mariposa Street, west of Lake Avenue, and walk.
Nearby is the Benziger Victorian-era house at 466 E. Mariposa.
On the other side of Lake Avenue, park in the vicinity of Mar Vista Avenue and Calaveras Street to see the Keyes bungalow at 1337 E. Boston Street and the Vanderbilt bungalow at 2016 Mar Vista. The spectacular Parsons house is at 1605 Altadena Drive .
