La Cañada History: Bulldozer takes out former Flower Pavilion to make way for bookstore

Ten Years Ago

Having begun its life as a service station that later housed the Flower Pavilion retail outlet and annual pumpkin patch, a building at the southeast corner of Foothill Boulevard at Chevy Chase Drive was bulldozed on Aug. 26, 2008 to make way for the new location of Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse. It took a six-man crew just three hours to clear the aging building from the site.

Twenty Years Ago

La Cañada Flintridge resident Carly Geehr, then 13, qualified to make the U.S. team for the 1999 Pan American Games while swimming for the Rose Bowl Aquatics at the U.S. Swimming National Championships.

Thirty Years Ago

A rain-slicked roadway was cited by the California Highway Patrol as a contributing factor in a chain-reaction collision involving three trucks and four cars on the eastbound Foothill (210) Freeway near the Gould Avenue offramp. Five motorists sustained injuries and were transported to area hospitals.

Forty Years Ago

Two weeks prior to the start of the new school year, two classrooms were destroyed at Paradise Canyon Elementary School in an arson fire, the second such incident in two successive days at the Knight Way campus.

Fifty Years Ago

Terry Cole, 28, then a resident of La Cañada’s Carmel Road, was named Mrs. California and a runner-up in the Mrs. America contest. The mother of two said that when her children were a little older she’d like to “go back to school and become a minister.” Later known as Terry Cole-Whittaker (following a divorce and remarriage) she followed through on that goal. She was ordained in the Church of Religious Science and became a television and radio personality. Also a best-selling author, today she heads the foundation Adventures in Enlightenment.

Sixty Years Ago

During the wee hours of a morning in late August 1958, an intruder tripped over a small metal pan on the floor of a guest house behind a home on Chehalem Road. The ensuing clatter awakened the occupants of the small building and scared off the would-be burglar.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.