Beer Baron Crafted Garden From Riverbed
Since the days of the Spanish missionaries, the steep gorge of boulders and oak trees that runs southwest out of Pasadena has been called the Arroyo Seco--dry riverbed.
Poets have extolled its parched beauty; bandits once loved the refuge afforded by its secluded stands of willows and oaks; and a beer baron once transformed it into a lush, sunken garden referred to as the “eighth wonder of the world.”
Most Southern Californians of a certain age remember Busch Gardens, the Van Nuys brewery and theme park, where Anheuser-Busch Cos. produced its local suds. But fewer recall the verdant 30-acre miracle that the St. Louis-based brewing company’s founder, Adolphus Busch, created around his winter home on Pasadena’s Orange Grove Boulevard, the city’s so-called millionaires row along the Arroyo Seco.
After immigrating to St. Louis, the German-born Busch began operating a business that supplied small breweries. He married Lilly Anheuser, the daughter of soap-maker Eberhard Anheuser, who had foreclosed on a small brewery and was attempting to keep it running. Busch joined his father-in-law in 1864 as a salesman, later becoming the guiding force behind the company that eventually became the international giant Anheuser-Busch.
The beer that Busch initially peddled was so bad that customers often spit it back over the bar. He became determined to improve its quality and create a “King of Beers.” And, in 1878, he thought he had achieved his goal with a brew he called “Budweiser” after a Bohemian town, then known as Budwise.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the railroads, trolleys and climate made Pasadena a mecca for tourists, a winter haven for wealthy Midwesterners and a home for fervent prohibitionists.
In the winter of 1903, atop a slight rise in the 1000 block on Orange Grove Boulevard and surrounded by a teetotaling citizenry, Busch moved into a stone mansion with a granite driveway. The family’s alcohol-loathing neighbors, however, never quite accepted the Busches into Pasadena’s polite society. Undismayed, Busch soon began to convert his 30-acre backyard on both sides of Arroyo Boulevard, between Madeline Drive and the back of Mayfield High School, into one of California’s most celebrated gardens. He hired Scottish landscape architect Robert Fraser and a staff of trained gardeners whose numbers sometimes swelled to 30.
In 1906, three years and $2 million later, the garden was opened to the public--for a small admission charge. Magnificent stands of oak trees, 14 miles of pathways, moss-rimmed ponds, an old millhouse, waterfalls cascading into a lake graced by swans and terra cotta figures of fairy tale characters (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White) abounded, drawing thousands, including President William Howard Taft.
The man who brought bottled beer to the masses and founded a dynasty, but was shunned by temperance-entranced neighbors, died in 1913. Lilly Busch continued to live in the mansion until her death in 1928, donating the proceeds from admissions to American war veterans. The family kept the gardens open until 1937, when the land was sold and subdivided.
Soon after it closed, the gardens doubled as the legendary hiding place of Errol Flynn’s band of merry men in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”.
In 1948, when the majestic mansion was sold and torn down, a zoning change began the transformation of Orange Grove Boulevard from millionaires Row, with mansions, curving driveways and scrolled iron gates, to an area of elegant condominiums and garden apartments.
Today, the only traces left of Mr. Busch’s Gardens are some street names, the old millhouse--now privately owned--and portions of the pathways that meander through several properties.
