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 [...]
What is this? What’s happening here? Editor’s Note: please welcome the second installment of Ann Erdman’s “Mystery History” column, where she provides the seldom known details of locally historical photographs. One of Ann’s readers, Wanda, guessed correctly: “Guests are enjoying their stay at the Arroyo Vista Guest House, which later became the Vista del Arroyo [...]
Where are we? And what’s happening? Editor’s Note: Ann Erdman, newly retired Public Information Officer for the City of Pasadena, has kindly agreed to regularly share with Hometown Pasadena readers her love of local history,…and clear up some of its many pictorial mysteries. In this 1940 photo, members of the Sorelle Club, a Pasadena City [...]
Old Town may have been Pasadena’s original town center, but for many decades the Playhouse District has been its cultural and artistic nexus. It’s also home to a staggering number of architecturally significant buildings, many of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since the district has been in the news lately, [...]
When author Upton Sinclair swept the California gubernatorial primaries in August 1934, he achieved a phenomenal feat. Until then, Democrats in California had been a marginal presence, but Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign “brought a Democratic party into existence,” as Baltimore Sun reporter Carey McWilliams recalled in 1982, and was ”the acorn from which evolved [...]
Early in October 1934, the California Real Estate Association was holding its annual convention at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara. “California Straight Ahead” was the theme of the three-day event, whose honorary guests included Harry H. Culver, founder of Culver City, Nevada governor Morley Griswold, and California governor Frank Merriam. The 1934 convention was [...]
Since 1964, the drab warehouse at 835 S. Raymond Avenue has served as one of several float-decorating venues for the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. From 1969-70, it also rang with the guitars of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and other bands. Though neither aesthetically nor acoustically impressive, in one year the Rose Palace presented an [...]
The headlines splashed across the local papers the next day. “Arrest Negro Lecturer for Morals Accusation,” stated the Pasadena Independent. Bayard Rustin, the civil rights organizer who would go on to become famous for organizing the March on Washington, had been arrested on a charge of “vagrancy and lewd behavior” by Pasadena police officers. Rustin had [...]
In April 1914, the Pasadena Star reported that city officials were seeking censors “who are not extreme in any direction” to head a panel ensuring cinemagoers would not be exposed to lewd or immoral films. Though theater owners may have been dismayed, Pasadena’s censorship program delighted the moral watchdogs of the city. By March 1915, [...]
Awhile back, we wrote about abolitionist John Brown’s three children and son-in-law, who settled in Pasadena in the 1880s. Though certainly the most famous, they were far from being the only abolitionists in early Pasadena; nor were they the only ones with connections to the notable abolitionist. The city’s connection to the pre-Civil War antislavery [...]
