2014 Pasadena Showcase home recalls an English estate
The 2014 Pasadena Showcase House of Design opened last Sunday with much fanfare. Celebrating its 50th Showcase House of Design, Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts members and designers invites guests to tour the English Arts & Crafts style house and grounds in Pasadena through May 11. Seventeen interior and eight exterior designers are displaying their exceptional and innovative imaginings for this historic home and its spacious grounds.
PHOTOS: 2014 Pasadena Showcase House of Design
In 1915, Robert Philip Flint and his wife Margaret, who were frequent British Isles and Continental travelers, chose Los Angeles architect Stiles O. Clements to design their home in the fashion of many homes they had seen on their adventures in England.
Robert, the brother of Sen. Frank Flint, who developed Flintridge, was by education a mining engineer. He studied at Yale University and at the Colorado School of Mines.
On April 7, 1909, the Los Angeles Harold-Examiner Newspaper reported, “A dispatch from Evansville, Ind., last night told of the marriage there yesterday of Miss Margaret Gray, daughter of Mrs. Margaret Gray of that city, and Robert P. Flint of Los Angeles.
“Mr. Flint is a popular member, or rather was, of the Bachelors’ Club and also belongs to the California and Country Club. Mrs. Flint made a wide circle of friends and admirers during a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Gray of Pasadena this winter, and was perhaps the most feted young woman who has visited Los Angeles this season.
“Mr. Flint, who is a brother to Frank P. Flint, will make a home for his bride in Los Angeles.”
The architect was a prominent Southern California architect for 50 years. He was born in Maryland, studied architecture at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, and took further studies at L’eole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
He came to Los Angeles in 1911, working with several architecture firms. In 1955, he formed Clements & Clements, a partnership with his son Robert. He lived in Beverly Hills and was active in the stock Exchange Club, the Bel Air Bay Club, and the Guild Opera Company. He was an avid equestrian and his favorite horse was named Sage Brush.
Clements was a key figure in the 1920s Art Deco movement and in the 1930s Streamline Modern style. Among his notable buildings are the Richfield Oil Building in downtown Los Angeles, the Owl Drug Store/Julian Medical building in Hollywood, the Swim Gym at Beverly Hills High School 7and the Mayan Theater. Clements also designed in historicist motif and revivalism styles, such the Spanish revival Adamson House in Malibu and the Mesopotamian revival Sampson Tire & Rubber Co. (now the Citadel).
The Pasadena estate, as designed by Clements, sits on 3.5 wooded acres and features a pool, bathhouse, river-rock springhouse, tennis and badminton courts, a greenhouse, gardener’s potting shed and a pond. It has seven bedrooms, 10 baths, five fireplaces, oak floors, redwood wall paneling and floor-to-ceiling leaded glass windows. Above the carriage house there is a one-bedroom chauffeur’s suite complete with a sitting room and kitchenette.
In 1915, when the average Los Angeles area house cost $5,000, the builder Thomas C. Marlowe completed the Flints’ estate home for $28,000. Particularly notable is an artesian spring that sits on the property and predates the house. The land that encompasses the spring had been formerly owned by Edwin Baker and his wife Abigail, dairy farmers who operated the Netherbank Dairy. They erected a natural stone house over the artesian spring they called “the stone milk-house.” It was there they kept their milk cool.
In 1925 Robert Flint and his wife sold the estate to James and Susan Everding. In 1942, Susan Everding sold the property to Philip and Alberta Chandler, the son and daughter-in-law of the Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler. Philip Chandler was the general manager and executive vice president of Times Mirror. He passed away in 1968 and the estate was sold to John and Lillian Fulmer in 1972 before eventually passing into the hands of today’s owners.
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