The Freeway and Historic Homes
The Mackintosh houses in Scotland are maintained and preserved through the National Preservation of Historical Monuments. They are of the arts and crafts movement, which also came to America, and we have many fine examples of these in our community here in South Pasadena.
The difference between our arts and crafts houses and the ones in Scotland is that ours are not preserved, ours have no protection at all.
The (710) Freeway proposition poses a disastrous threat. Even if we relocate a few of the houses, the rest that aren’t moved will eventually deteriorate because the houses are not protected by any preservation act. Their only protection is the people who live in them and the people who love this community the way the pioneers who built this town did. The freeway will destroy the community that protects these houses.
Imagine plowing a freeway through Rome or Brussels. It is just not done. South Pasadena could be as important as any historical place to visit, if it were respected as such.
In Europe, they have designed their surface streets to go around the old monuments. Yes, the traffic doesn’t always flow freely, but it never occurred to anyone while I lived there that they should be moved so we could get somewhere faster.
MADELAINE HILL
South Pasadena
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