Leading modern lives inside a grand antique

There are castles in the air, castles in the sand. And there is Castle Green, which is not really a castle either, but a fantastic folly created from the imagination of a Victorian architect with a penchant for Arabesque opulence.

Frederick L. Roehrig designed Pasadena’s Castle Green in 1898 as a lavish winter resort for rich East-Coast revelers. The imposing Moorish-style structure is redolent with atmosphere, from its cylindrical turrets to its ornate cornices. You have to stop and remind yourself that this is no longer a grand turn-of-the-century hotel, but condominiums.

Artists, writers, movie producers, musicians and architects are among those who now claim the castle as their own. Its quirkiest and most famous feature -- a second-floor turret at the end of a bridge, which reaches across the grounds to Raymond Avenue -- is the studio of painter R. Kenton Nelson. In another turret, two stories up, graphics designer Jim Marrin has transformed his one-bedroom unit into a showcase for his Arts and Crafts furnishings. On the fifth floor, Jan Cady has winnowed down her secondhand finds to fit neatly into a tiny studio.

The building, under constant renovation since the mid-1990s, serves as the perfect stage for the creative whims of characters who share a love of old things.

In the evenings, residents hang out on the roof, lounging on colorful wicker chairs lugged to the Castle from flea markets at the Rose Bowl and Pasadena City College. From the top of this building, they can see the tips of high-rises in downtown Los Angeles, while to the north they have a panoramic view of the San Gabriel Mountains.

“I’m really on top of the world here,” said Nelson, 49, who has produced two New Yorker covers this year from Castle Green. “This has got to be the best space in all of Pasadena.”

It’s also one of the hardest to get into. Units rarely come on the market. When they do, a one-bedroom can sell for more than $500,000. The handful of rentals in the 52-unit building start at $1,200 for a 450-square-foot unit and rise to $2,000 a month for a three-room unit.

Nor is it a particularly easy place to live: The plumbing is old, the units can be sweltering in summer and fuses can blow if you turn on your hair dryer while the laptop is running. To do laundry, you have to travel down a hand-operated elevator to the basement where, legend has it, a ghost hangs out.

On top of all that, the residents govern the building. Just try getting a group of free spirits to agree. “The lunatics are running the asylum,” Nelson quipped.

Even so, it’s worth it to be there.

From Nelson’s studio windows, he can see every aspect of the mustard-colored monolith: red-tiled roofs, wrought-iron balconies, loggias, domes, arches, pillars, verandas.

Growing up in Pasadena, he would often drive past the building and wonder who lived there. Four years ago, he decided to purchase a small space on the first floor as his home away from home, a place where he could paint during the day. But, during the afternoons, the east-facing unit became too dark.

When the building’s bright, airy turret at the end of the truncated bridge became available two years ago, Nelson decided to move his easel into the octagon-shaped room. Like many parts of the castle, however, the area was dilapidated. In fact, half the bridge, which connected the castle to another building across the street, had been demolished decades ago. Nelson spent $4,000 stripping paint off the century-old window sills and plastering over huge gaps in the walls.

Transformed, the turret stands on four columns, hovering one story above the sidewalk like a luxurious treehouse. On a recent weekday morning, you could hear jazz playing from Nelson’s studio halfway up the block. Inside, the artist was working on a painting of a woman in a vintage bathing suit.

Like most of Nelson’s work, the piece depicts life in mid-20th century America, using deeply saturated colors to transform everyday scenes into something dynamic and powerful. Nelson himself seems to have stepped out of the past. He uses words like “splendid” and “gee whiz.” His studio is decorated with utilitarian items circa 1950: a metal desk with a pockmarked Formica surface, a vintage dentist’s cabinet. An old medical table provides the perfect place to mix paint.

On a table under one of the windows, Nelson has carefully arranged a collection of old hose nozzles, finding beauty in the practical. “They really are amazing little machines.”

Nelson keeps only a few of his paintings in his studio; most have been sent off to galleries around the country, where they sell for more than $10,000 each. Here, he decorates his walls largely with the work of other people, many of them anonymous. Near his easel is an unsigned painting of a dark-haired woman. He spotted it while browsing in a thrift shop with his wife, Tessa. When he went back to buy it, the painting was gone. Six months later, Tessa presented it to him on his birthday.

Around 5 p.m., Nelson leaves the castle to go home to the Spanish-style house he shares nearby with his wife and a baby daughter. “After a long, hard day’s work, it’s good to go home,” Nelson said. He’s back by 7 a.m. the next day, greeting Castle residents as they leave for work. “I have the run of the joint all day long,” Nelson said. “Isn’t that something?”

Marrin, a taciturn man with horn-rimed glasses and a vast wardrobe of vintage Hawaiian shirts, spends almost all of his time in Castle Green. During the day, he runs his graphic design business from the basement. In the evenings, he retires to the fourth-floor quarters he meticulously decorated with rare finds from the Arts and Crafts movement.

The spacious condo glows amber at night, illuminated by a half-dozen Dirk van Erp hammered-copper lamps. His circular living room is filled with honey-colored oak furniture by Gustav Stickley. One of his favorite pieces is a so-called “toy cabinet,” a small piece with narrow shelves. “It’s one of the better ones I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Marrin, 63, started collecting Arts and Crafts pieces 35 years ago, before it became fashionable. Every month, he and his then wife would get up before dawn to scout for deals at a flea market. In the 1970s, few were buying up Arts and Crafts pieces. Determined to outsmart his competition, Marrin schooled himself on the masters of the era. He quickly learned to spot gems amid piles of junk.

One morning, during one of his antiquing expeditions, he noticed a Deco-style silver tea set in one of the booths. He picked up the creamer and studied an engraving -- a simple “I. H.” Marrin offered the vendor about $100 for the set and then carted it home. Through research, he confirmed what he suspected all along: The tea set was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The set, worth thousands of dollars, has since been included in exhibits at museums around the world. “It’s been more places than I’ve been,” said Marrin. With his eye for a bargain, Marrin jumped at an opportunity to purchase a Castle Green apartment in 1989, when units were selling for $100,000. The building was in horrible condition, but Marrin believed it could be restored to its previous glory, reflecting a time when it was a playground for presidents, tycoons and movie stars.

Enlisting the help of Pasadena’s powerful historic preservation advocates, Marrin and other owners went about the work of reversing the ravages of time, receiving more than a half-million dollars in state grant money to overhaul the building. The structure was returned to its original colors -- tones of mustard, tan and green. Special molds were made to replicate fleur-de-lis plaques, cornices and growling gargoyles.

In his own unit, which had been painted turquoise and hot pink by a previous tenant, Marrin brought in experts to restore the unit’s luxurious cedar moldings and doors. He painted the walls and the concrete floor sage green, sponge-painted the round living-room ceiling beige and gold, sewed curtains of cream-colored linen and made special curtain rods from bent metal.

The colors were intentionally muted, except for one accessory that Marrin couldn’t resist -- a purple, flowered Chinese silk rug, bought for $1,000 in an EBay auction. Carved wooden and pounded copper sculptures, including a life-sized face of a woman, add even more interest.

“I just go with what catches my eye,” Marrin said. “I love the unexpected. It’s like living in the castle -- anything is possible.”

Castle Green caught Cady’s eye more than 20 years ago. The interior designer would drive past the building and look up in awe. “I said, ‘What is that building?’ I wondered if it was dreary inside.” Finally, she knocked on the door, where she was greeted by an elevator operator.

“I told him: ‘I want to live here,’ ” said Cady, who was going through a divorce at the time and looking for a fresh start. He told her there were no vacancies. She checked back, again and again. Finally, there was an apartment for rent -- a tiny two-room “junk heap” on the fifth floor.

With a contractor and cleaning crew in tow, Cady, 66, moved in. Her contractor built a special closet in one corner of her living room where she could stash a Murphy bed during the day. She set up her desk in a little room next to the kitchen and closed off a short hallway to use as a walk-in pantry. The scale of her furniture was all-important. A slip-covered loveseat was paired with a set of French wicker chairs; a weathered pine table was put on double duty as a computer desk and snack bar. She pared down her belongings by selling off many of the antiques and flea-market finds she had accumulated, and within months the dreary hovel had been transformed into “a sweet little place.” Cady describes her style as “English funky,” a place where antique quilts coexist with Indian textiles. Her walls are covered with line drawings from a book of Dickens illustrations. A peeling red, white and blue cabinet -- filled with books, bills and jars of colorful marbles and buttons -- occupies a corner near the door.

Like Nelson, Cady is intrigued by the beauty of the mundane: a good quality to have when space is at a minimum. A ceramic bowl holding a half-dozen eyeglasses provides not just a storage place but an idiosyncratic piece of decor. Her scissors, paintbrushes and pens are arranged in flower frogs on a wicker bookcase. A vintage map becomes a whimsical window shade. “It’s playful,” said Cady, who spends evenings on her balcony overlooking the grounds. “It should be fun.”

If she ever feels crowded, she simply rings the elevator operator to take her down to the ground floor, where residents gather in large, kilim-covered sitting rooms.

“I love this building, and the people here are a bonus,” Cady said. “It’s just old and wonderful. For us it’s home.”