Photos courtesy of PMH and the Pasadena Central Library

Where are we? And what’s happening?

In this 1903 photo, young students plant gardens at James A. Garfield Elementary School.

The school, at what is now the northeast corner of Pasadena Avenue and California Boulevard, was designed by the firm Ridgeway, Stewart & Son in the Anglo-Teutonic style.

It opened in 1888 on a large property that included gardens and orchards planted and tended by students (with supervision, of course).

In their 1920 book The World’s Work: A History of Our Time, Walter Hines Page and Arthur Wilson Page wrote:

The Garfield school (in) Pasadena, California, is again conspicuous for its masses of pink ivy-geraniums over the stone wall which supports the sloping lawn, its beds of pink and white geraniums, (and) its clusters of rose bushes and palm trees. In New York, (such) limited space has prevented extensive gardens, but an occasional playground is outlined by a hedge of green.

With Pasadena’s population boom in the late 1800s, additions were built on the campus, including this charming kindergarten building that opened in 1902:

I love this photo of kindergarteners learning woodworking skills on one of the building’s porches:

Garfield School is long gone (a Vons shopping center inhabits the space now). These hale and hearty young boys bid you farewell.

Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library and the Pasadena Museum of History.

Ann Erdman is happily retired after decades of loyal service to the City of Pasadena as the Public Information Officer. Her blog can be found at annerdman.blogspot.com.