Author, social reformer and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote her most famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” while living in a small cottage near the corner of Orange Grove Boulevard and Arroyo Terrace in Pasadena.
Southern California was experiencing a record heat wave, when Gilman, who was 29 at the time, sat down at her [...]
It was one of those uniquely Pasadena landmarks when I was growing up. For most of my childhood, it simply read: “said T.E. Lawrence picking up his fork.” Located on the side of an 1880s-era brick building on Fair Oaks known as the Hotel Carver, it was an odd bit of dada graffiti. Everyone in town [...]
Growing up near the intersection of Los Robles Avenue and Washington Boulevard in the late 1980s and 1990s, I dimly remember “Cinema 21,” as it was then known. It was a mysterious, slightly seedy, endlessly fascinating building whose marquee with Spanish-language film titles (some of which may or may not have been adult films) intrigued [...]
Before the silly string, before the RVs and beer coolers and bleachers and picnic chairs, it all took place on a small chunk of land south of California Boulevard, known as “town lot.” Sandwiched today between the Caltech athletic buildings and a fenced-off residential neighborhood, the small sliver of grass known as Tournament Park was where [...]
It’s hardly the most eye-catching building in Pasadena, but I’ve always had a fondness for the small Hill Avenue Branch Library. Situated at the corner of Green Street and Hill Avenue, across from Pasadena City College, the library stands as an unassuming monument to Pasadena’s architectural golden age and is the oldest building in Pasadena’s [...]
When we think of California wine today, we think of Napa, Sonoma and the Santa Ynez Valley, but from the 1850s until the 1880s, the San Gabriel Valley was by far the largest wine-producing region in the state.
Rows of grapes once stretched for thousands of acres in what is now Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, [...]
Ah, the Plaza Pasadena. How to remember a mall that once had the dubious distinction of receiving an engineering excellence award from the Concrete Industry?
Mention the Plaza Pasadena to a longtime Pasadena resident and you will most likely get either a chuckle or a scowl. More recent transplants to the city will not recall the [...]
One of the casualties of the recent Station Fire was a serene peak in the Altadena foothills known as Little Round Top. Named for the site of a decisive Union victory in the Civil War, it is also the gravesite of one of the unsung heroes of the abolitionist movement. Owen Brown, son of radical [...]
Stay tuned to Hometown Pasadena’s newest channel dedicated to and written by our towns most ardent History Buffs. Local historian Matt Hormann will be taking a few new looks into the days of old, and the Prospect Park Books crew just may have some historical knowledge to pull from the archives as well.
We know it’s [...]
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