Attorneys now raise legal objections where hotel...

Attorneys now raise legal objections where hotel guests once danced to big bands.

The transformation has taken place in a 111-year-old Pasadena landmark perched above the Arroyo Seco, overlooking the Colorado Street Bridge. Once known as the Vista del Arroyo Hotel, the building has been a federal courthouse since 1986.

Last year, the imposing six-story, Spanish-Moorish building--with its ornate bell tower detached bungalows and villas--was named the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals, in honor of the senior federal judge who crusaded for converting the hotel into a courthouse.

The ballroom became a courtroom. The once-grand dining hall was turned into the law library. But the $10.8-million renovation did restore much of the building’s former elegance.

The conversion no doubt would have surprised the early-day proprietors.

The first was Emma C. Bangs, who arrived from the East with her daughter, who had tuberculosis. She called the place Mrs. Bangs’ Boarding House, but she also provided care for consumptives. It was among the first TB centers in the West.

After Bangs died in 1903, a group of businessmen bought the boardinghouse and renamed it Vista del Arroyo Hotel.

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The man responsible for bringing luxury to the Vista del Arroyo was hotelier Daniel M. Linnard, who ran three of Pasadena’s most fashionable pre-World War I hotels--the Maryland, Green and Huntington hotels. He also owned San Francisco’s famed Fairmont Hotel.

Linnard hired the architectural firm of Marston, Van Pelt & Maybury to expand the simple wood-frame boardinghouse into a bigger, Spanish Colonial Revival-style building.

In the 1920s, the hotel became a favorite winter vacation spot for wealthy Easterners. Some even built their own vacation bungalows, which looked more like villas than cottages.

The building took its present form in 1926, when Harry O. Comstock of Nevada bought the Vista del Arroyo. Architect George H. Wiemeyer designed its present, distinctive form, adding four floors and a domed tower at a cost of $1 million.

The 400-room haven for the wealthy opened Jan. 8, 1931, with Phil Fisher’s orchestra playing in the ballroom. One of the guests was the young Howard Hughes, traveling then with his father and aunt.

The master of ceremonies at the dances was Martin Block, manager of a radio station at the hotel that broadcast the dances. Block later gained fame as a disc jockey and host of the program “Make-Believe Ballroom.”

Linnard took back the hotel during the later years of the Depression and added formal gardens, fountains, a pool, and badminton and tennis courts. But the improvements didn’t help and business continued to decline.

The champagne ran out on Feb. 5, 1943, when the War Department announced that the complex would be taken over by the Army. The hotel’s 200 guests and permanent residents were moved to other area hotels. The government paid Linnard $650,000 and turned the hotel into a convalescent hospital. Called McCornack Army Hospital, the facility cared for mentally ill soldiers and those with contagious diseases.

The complex remained an Army hospital until 1949. Later, it was used for federal offices.

The government declared the building surplus property in 1974. By then, several transients had moved in. In 1982, part of the hotel burned.

Today, judges ponder the law in a building once known as the “Lounge of Perpetual Sunshine.” The old hotel has played host to the rich and famous, the sick, the homeless and, now, the judicious.