3 Marengo Block Buildings Will Escape Wreckers
Sixteen months from now, when bulldozers rumble onto the Marengo block, jackhammers break up the asphalt, laborers gut the old police building and a wrecking ball smashes into its north wing, three adjacent buildings will remain untouched.
They are the Marengo block survivors: the Brookmore Apartments, the American Legion hall and the Turner & Stevens building.
Through a combination of historical value, recent renovation and, in one case, owner stubbornness, the three escaped inclusion in a $50.5-million development plan.
Approved by the Pasadena Board of Directors last week, the giant project will boast 350 new residential units, a two-level underground parking structure, 9,000 square feet of retail space and 44 low-income senior housing units in the old police building, when it is completed.
One director called the project a future “showcase for downtown Pasadena.” City officials hope it will lure nearly 1,000 upscale residents to Pasadena’s urban core.
Yet, despite the coming glitz, business as usual will continue for the three survivors, veterans of more than half a century on the 100 block of North Marengo Avenue.
Built in 1924 as a hotel, the four-story Brookmore Apartments at 189 N. Marengo Ave. was, from the beginning, a special residence. The wide lobby of the brick building was graced with arches and supporting posts adorned with stucco garlands. A carved wooden flame still decorates each door. Instead of shared baths, each studio and one-bedroom unit was equipped with its own bathroom and kitchen. Ice boxes and milk delivery boxes from the 1920s remain today in each apartment.
But as time passed, the Brookmore lost its luster.
“When I moved in, we were having drug sales in the hallway,” said Marcia Hawthorne, a four-year tenant and now the building manager. “It was terrible. We had bums in here, drunks in here and hookers in here.”
Now, tenants in the building’s 51 units include students from the Pasadena Art Center College of Design and Pasadena Community College, as well as senior citizens and families.
“It’s become like a real hip place to be,” said resident Curtis Kim, a photojournalism student at Pasadena City College.
Tenants even vie for rooms that contain huge metal upright supports and cross planks, a recent earthquake safety measure that lends a high-tech touch.
“People hang things on them, put carpet around them for cats, paint them or incorporate them into bookcases,” Hawthorne said.
Hawthorne credits the building’s change to owner Ted Taylor, who estimates he has made more than $500,000 worth of improvements since he purchased the brick structure two years ago for $1.45 million. When the Janss Corp. approached him shortly thereafter with an offer to buy the building as part of the Marengo block project, Taylor refused to sell.
“They wanted to fix the price and pay later, two years down the line,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to wait for the money. “I bought the building because I thought there was plenty of upscale potential for it.”
That attitude, and his failure to pay $6,500 that the city estimates he owes the Public Works Department for providing parking for his tenants on a city-owned lot next door, has earned him less than a sympathetic ear from city officials and the Board of Directors.
Taylor has asked for help in locating replacement parking for his tenants when the city-owned parking lot is swallowed up by the Marengo development. The $504,000 that the Janss Corp. will charge him for 28 spaces is too expensive, Taylor said, to allow him to continue keeping rents between $400 and $600 at the Brookmore. But the board has simply told Taylor to bear the costs and not pass it on to his tenants.
Only a few Brookmore tenants even know of the coming changes. Those who are aware, like 23-year-old Cheryl Reyna, worry about where they will park. But they also worry about the new, upper-income neighbors who will live behind them in $1,500 apartments.
An eighth-grade dropout with two children, Reyna and her husband, Adolf, work as janitors. A thin woman, she bears a tattoo on her right wrist that reads “Mom,” a remnant of her wild youth and an attempt to make people believe that the then 14-year-old could be a mother.
“We always fit kind of in the middle, but this happening is something new for myself,” Reyna said on a recent weekday, as she stood outside the Brookmore and nervously rubbed her tattoo. “Are we going to fit in? Are we going to get along with them?”
For the veterans who belong to the American Legion, Post 13, at 131 N. Marengo Ave., such a question is irrelevant.
To walk upstairs into the Legion meeting hall is to step back in time, into a post-World War II sanctuary shut off from the concerns of 1990. The large auditorium is decorated with wooden replicas of military service arm patches. Black-and-white photos of past, uniformed legion commanders line the walls, as well as oil-painted landscapes in gilt frames. A lectern bears the motto “Loyalty.”
In the adjacent lounge, huge overstuffed couches, 1950s style, surround a fireplace and a massive, wooden coffee table. Stuffed antelope and deer heads adorn the walls and a large curving, wooden bar awaits customers to plunk themselves on black leather-topped stools and order Manhattans or Lucky Lagers. It’s a perfect movie set for actors wearing fedoras and wide-lapeled suits to enter to the strains of the Glenn Miller Band.
“I call it the grand old building,” said Herman Duwe, a 76-year-old Navy veteran and one of 300 Post 13 members. “No matter what happens, it will always be the American Legion building.”
Built by World War I veterans in 1924, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Civic Center District. It is also home to one of the oldest American Legion posts in the state. Post 13 was chartered in 1919 and reached its height in the 1950s, when it boasted 1,800 members, Duwe said.
The four ground-floor offices, now occupied by a real estate company, attorneys and a bail bondsman, once housed armed service recruiting offices. During the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, post members provided doughnuts and coffee upstairs for the youths drafted into service who were picked up at the legion building and whisked away to boot camps.
Now, the building’s second floor remains locked and unused most of the time. The legionnaires meet only once a month. Should the post continue to lose members and lose its charter, the building could be sold, with the profits going to the California American Legion.
“There are a great many waiting in line who would love to purchase it,” Duwe said.
The Turner & Stevens building next door to the Legion hall already bears the mark of downtown rehabilitation, with its interior pink and burgundy walls, Art Deco lighting fixtures and exposed beams.
A former mortuary, the 1922 building predates the 1925 Civic Center. Its Tudor style links it to Pasadena’s Craftsman-style homes, and it is included on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building is owned by Pasadena Investors, a 40-member partnership that poured about $3 million into the building, including its purchase in 1984.
“It was in horrible shape. The top floor had not been occupied for 20 years,” said Neil Mosher, owner of the San Francisco company that manages the building.
Renovations to the brick structure were worked out in cooperation with Pasadena Heritage, which threw an Edgar Allan Poe-themed party to celebrate when the work was done.
Now, it houses seven tenants and the two-year-old Holly Street Bar and Grill, an eatery that counts City Hall bureaucrats and politicians as regulars.
“I’m kind of happy they’re going to develop the block; I was sick of having that junk next door,” Mosher said of Police Department trailers, a dirt lot and the exposed railroad track. “I’m pretty sure development will bring up the value of our property.”
