Los Angeles in the 1930s

By 1888 the boom had subsided. Subdivisions and citrus groves were overrun with weeds. The population dwindled, bank deposits shrank, and everyone appealed to the Board of Trade for aid. Gradually prosperity returned; an irrigation system was extended to surrounding dry lands. The early nineties saw the construction through the city of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, the Terminal Railroad, and the beginning of construction of the cable railway up Mount Lowe. The latter was advertised with the slogan “From oranges to the snow.” In 1891 Amos G. (“Father”) Throop established the polytechnic school that later grew into the California Institute of Technology. By 1900 Pasadena had a population of 10,000.

The Mount Wilson Observatory (see Tour 1A) was established in 1904. Civic improvements went steadily forward. Dr. Norman Bridge, who had come to California for his health, remained to bestow $300,000 on “Cal-Tech” for the erection of the Bridge Laboratory of Physics and the Norman Bridge Library of Physics. In 1921 Henry E. Huntington (see Tour 1) acquired Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, the Board of Trade changed its name to the Chamber of Commerce, and building construction amounted to $7,000,000; Pasadena had definitely arrived.

Building continued at a feverish pace throughout the 1920’s. During the depression building construction slackened, but the city, for the most part, continued its leisurely and affluent ways, encouraging the arts and sciences, discouraging industry and commerce, still reflecting the spirit of the settlers who came here “to get where life is easy.”

POINTS OF INTEREST

The CIVIC CENTER lies along Garfield Ave., between Green St. on the south and Walnut St. on the north. This wide section of Garfield Ave. has broad strips of park along its west side.

1. The buff-colored CITY HALL (open; apply at Rm. 119 for adm. to tower), 100 N. Garfield Ave., designed by Bakewell and Brown, dominates the Civic Center with its tower in four diminishing stages with domes on the third and fourth. Wings project in the rear and are connected by an arcade, forming a large patio. Small cupolas, repeating the lines of the central dome, rise at the corners.

2. The PASADENA PUBLIC LIBRARY (open weekdays 9-9), 285 E. Walnut St., designed by Hunt and Chambers in 1925, is a long, two-story, tile-roofed building of modified Spanish Colonial design. Between forward wings is a forecourt surrounded by a loggia. In this court are tall slender fan palms, three on each side of the main entrance. The tile roof of the loggia is supported by frame columns reminiscent of those in old Spanish buildings. Above the magnificent black metal entrance doors are five arched windows. The library contains approximately 200,000 volumes, many rare books and works of art, and a collection of phonograph records for circulation.

3. ALL SAINTS’ EPISCOPAL CHURCH (open), 132 N. Euclid Ave., is of late English Gothic design with a low, heavy, battlemented tower. A cloister of delicate stone tracery at the rear of a landscaped courtyard leads to parish buildings. The interior is finished in luminous brown oak lighted by windows of richly colored glass.

4. The GRACE NICHOLSON ART GALLERY (open weekdays 9-4; free), 30 N. Los Robles Ave., exhibits its collection of modern American and European paintings and art objects in a reproduction of a modern Chinese house, as much an exhibition piece as anything in it. The heavily ornamented roof is of green enameled pantiles from an old temple near Peking, with grotesque terra-cotta dogs and dragons at the points of the roof. On each side of the main entrance—a stone arch with tracery—is a great marble dog of the Ming dynasty, also brought from near Peking.

5. The CIVIC AUDITORIUM (open Wed. 2-4), 300 E. Green St., a two-story concrete building with Italian Renaissance decorative motifs designed by Bergstrom, Bennett, and Haskell, has strong horizontal lines emphasized by a low-pitched red tile hip roof with a wide overhang at the eaves. Five upper-story windows in blind arches are decorated at the top with scroll patterns on blue tile.

Inside the auditorium, running entirely around the walls, is a series of panels on mythological Greek subjects adapted from drawings by Raphael, done with cameo effect on a brick-red ground. Frescoes on upper walls and ceiling carry out the theme of the panels. All were done by John B. Smeraldi.

6. The PASADENA COMMUNITY PLAYHOUSE (open 9-4, except during Sat. matinees), 37 S. El Molino Ave., is housed in white plaster buildings around a rough-flagged court. Gilmor Brown, manager of the present playhouse, brought a company of professional players to the old Savoy Theatre in 1916, and after an unprofitable season appealed to Pasadena’s civic leaders to assist in reviving the drama. An advisory committee of citizens assisted in organizing in 1918 the Pasadena Community Playhouse Association as a non-profit corporation; the present theatre was erected in 1924-25. The playhouse has a wide repertoire and claims the distinction of having produced all of Shakespeare’s plays. A Midsummer Dramatic Festival has been an annual event since 1935. More than 80 plays have had national or world premieres here. Casts are chosen from among 1,000 associated players and from the 200 students in the playhouse’s School of the Theatre, founded in 1928, which conducts a Laboratory Theatre for the staging of plays by new authors.

POINTS OF INTEREST

City Hall
Public Library
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
Grace Nicholson Art Gallery
Civic Auditorium
Pasadena Community Playhouse
California Institute of Technology
Huntington Hotel
The Old Mill
Busch Gardens
Colorado Street Bridge
Memorial Flagpole
California Graduate School of Design
La Miniatura
Rose Bowl
Devil’s Gate Dam
St. Elizabeth Catholic Church
Westminster Presbyterian Church

7. The CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 1201 E. California St., had its beginnings in a small vocational training school called Throop Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1891 by Amos G. Throop, onetime mayor of Pasadena. In 1910 it was moved to the present campus and became the Throop College of Technology, the only institution west of the Mississippi devoted exclusively to the training of engineers. During the next decade the school enlisted the interest of several nationally known scientists and educators, and the financial aid of businessmen and philanthropists. In 1920 an executive council was formed, and its chairmanship was assumed by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, who is still president of the institute. In later years the name was changed to the California Institute of Technology. Contributors to the institute’s endowment have included the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim foundations. The Carnegie Institution of Washington helps to maintain the Seismological Research Laboratory in the San Rafael Hills, some three miles from the campus. The General Educational Board, an agency of the Rockefeller Foundation, supplied funds for the erection of the institute’s great 200-inch telescope and astrophysical observatory on Palomar Mountain in San Diego County.

The enrollment is limited to approximately 800 by scholarship standards. The teaching staff of 200 includes men of national and international reputation in their respective fields who were attracted to “Cal-Tech” principally by the opportunities for research. Dr. Millikan, director of the college’s physics laboratory, won the 1923 Nobel award in physics for his discoveries in cosmic ray radiation; Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, director of the biological division, won a Nobel prize in 1923 for his studies in genetics; and Dr. Carl David Anderson, a graduate, was awarded the 1936 Nobel prize in physics for his discovery of the positron.

The older buildings on the 32-acre campus are Mediterranean in style; the newer buildings are of functional design with plain geometrical ornamentation, and are connected by loggias. To the left of the main entrance, a wide approach from Wilson Avenue, are the KERCK-HOFF BIOLOGICAL LABORATORIES, a long, low, cream-colored concrete unit with an arcaded loggia along the front. The institute’s marine station at Corona del Mar supplies specimens for research work and laboratory classes. A 10-acre farm for studies in plant genetics is maintained at Arcadia. Behind the MUDD and the ARMS GEOLOGICAL LABORATORIES (R), which resemble the biological laboratories, is the ASTROPHYSICS LABORATORY, whose staff works closely with those of the Palomar Mountain Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory (see Tour 1A). Adjoining the Astrophysics Laboratory on the west is CULBERTSON HALL, an auditorium.

Beyond the biological and geological laboratory groups, the approach broadens into a large plaza. The GATES AND CRELLIN CHEMICAL LABORATORY group (L) contains photographic dark-rooms, a glass-blowing room, instrument and carpenter shops, and the chemistry library. The NORMAN BRIDGE LABORATORY OF PHYSICS (R) has many special research laboratories, the general institute library, the engineering library, and the library of physics.

THROOP HALL, in the center of the campus facing west, houses the administration offices and the engineering department. It follows the design of the Carmel Mission near Monterey, having a low central tower, and two lesser towers with open-arched imitation belfries.

DABNEY HALL OF THE HUMANITIES, left of Throop Hall, is a three-story L-shaped building. Right of Throop Hall, in the east wing of another L-shaped building, is the KELLOGG LABORATORY OF RADIATION, equipped for high-potential X-ray work; it contains the famous “atom smasher,” Dr. C. C. Lauritsen’s high-potential X-ray tube. The HIGH-POTENTIAL RESEARCH LABORATORY is the main unit of this building. A sculpture over the door represents a dynamo tended by two Titans. This laboratory is equipped for the study of problems of electrical transmission at high potentials, and problems in the structure of matter and the nature of radiation. To the east is the ASTROPHYSICS MACHINE SHOP, where new astronomical instruments are being developed for use in the Palomar Mountain Observatory. In this building machines for grinding the 200-inch reflector for the giant telescope were built. The OPTICAL SHOP, east of the Astrophysics Machine Shop, has equipment for grinding the telescope mirror, and its accessory mirrors.

The GUGGENHEIM AERONAUTICAL LABORATORY, a plain three-story building north of the Astrophysics Machine Shop, contains a 10-foot high-speed wind tunnel, an aerodynamics department with several small wind tunnels and auxiliary apparatus, a woodshop large enough for the building of complete airplanes, and the aeronautical library.

TOURNAMENT PARK (free), SW corner of E. California St. and S. Wilson Ave., is a large shady common with athletic fields and picnic facilities; here the Tournament of Roses parade ends each New Year’s Day. The afternoon sports of the Rose Tournament were held here every year from 1890 to 1923, the year in which the Rose Bowl was completed.

8. The HUNTINGTON HOTEL, intersection of Oak Knoll and Wentworth Aves., from which it is reached by a long driveway, is a rambling six-story building built in 1906 by the late Henry E. Huntington (see Pueblo to Metropolis). At the rear of the hotel is the slender, covered PICTURE BRIDGE, hung with wistaria, spanning a garden with lily ponds and a swimming pool; within the bridge are hung paintings of California scenery.

9. The OLD MILL (private), 1120 Old Mill Rd., a rough vinemantled adobe on a hillside under a few lacy shade trees, is a much restored and renovated mill built first under the direction of Father Zalvidea of the San Gabriel Mission in 1812. The upper part of the building housed the two grinding stones; a large lower room on the east side was divided into two wheel chambers, through which water ran, to be discharged through two large arches still seen in the lower east wall. The mill has been twice restored, but the basic construction, much of the old adobe, many of the roof tiles, and parts of the old brick floor remain. The reveals of door and windows still bear the original oxblood coloring. A hitching-block made of two old millstones stands in the front yard.

The ARROYO SECO (dry watercourse) is a wide-spreading gorge choked with blue-green shrubbery, which runs from the San Gabriel Mountains along the base of the San Rafael Hills to the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles. A narrow stream, dry in summer but swollen occasionally to flood proportions in the winter rainy season, twists along the arroyo bottom. Parts of the arroyo have been made into public parks, and it is proposed to improve the entire area. Local laws protect wild life along the arroyo, and birds abound here.

10. The BUSCH GARDENS (open 9-5; adults 25¢, children 10¢), 959 S. Arroyo Blvd., lie along the edge of the arroyo and descend its banks to a lake graced by white swans and fed by rills that run down the slope over many miniature waterfalls. Scattered about the gardens are groups of terra-cotta figures representing scenes from such tales as Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. The gardens, once part of the grounds surrounding the mansion of Adolphus Busch (1830-1913), St. Louis brewer, are now administered by Pasadena Post No. 13, of the American Legion, which uses admission fees to maintain its disabled veterans’ fund.

11. The COLORADO STREET BRIDGE sweeps into Pasadena from the west in a majestic curve over the Arroyo Seco. It was not built on a curve for purely ornamental purposes; at this point no suitable bedrock footings could be found for the construction of a straight bridge. In 1937 the city stretched a fence topped with barbed wire along the balustrade, thus ending the long series of deaths due to jumps from the high parapet into the arroyo that in the 1920’s led to the structure’s being known as “Suicide Bridge.”

12. The MEMORIAL FLAGPOLE, W. Colorado St. and Orange Grove Ave., erected in 1927, commemorates Pasadena’s World War dead. The flagstaff, more than 100 feet high, rises from a base bearing bronze World War figures sculptured in high relief.

CARMELITA GARDEN (free), 425 W. Colorado St., now a somewhat faded spot with lawn, trees and shrubs, was once the home garden of Dr. Ezra Slocum Carr (1818-1894), author and educator. John Muir brought to the garden many of the trees and shrubs growing here.

13. On the east end of the garden is the CALIFORNIA GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN (open Mon. to Fri. 9-4, Sat. 9-12; free lectures and exhibitions at irregular intervals), which is housed in a two-story multigabled frame building. The school teaches modern industrial design and awards the degree of Master of Arts.

A 4,520-seat grandstand, facing Colorado Street, is set up on the south side of Carmelita Garden every year in preparation for the annual Tournament of Roses parade on New Year’s Day. The official reviewing stand and the starting point of the parade are at the nearby intersection of Colorado Street and Orange Grove Avenue. Each year the stands are taken apart after the parade and the pieces stored.

14. LA MINIATURA, 645 Prospect Crescent, a studio-residence built for Mrs. George Madison Millard in 1923, was the first of the concrete-block houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The architect describes the house as a “genuine expression of California in terms of modern industry and American life . . . an interpretation of her [Mrs. Millard’s] career as a book collector, something that belongs to the ground on which it stands.”

The two-story house, framed by eucalyptus trees, is reflected in a pool in the sunken gardens. The house has double walls to provide insulation against heat, cold, dampness, and fire. The concrete bricks are stamped with a radial cross design which here and there becomes fenestration.

BROOKSIDE PARK, Arroyo Seco between Holly St. and Devil’s Gate Dam, is a 521-acre playground containing the Rose Bowl and the municipal golf courses. The recreational section, lighted at night, includes plunges, tennis courts, picnic grounds, baseball fields, and a children’s playground, tavern, and bandstand. The grounds are planted to live oak, sycamore, and other native trees and shrubbery. Cut into the canyon walls are many hiking and bridle trails, rock stairways, and secluded nooks with stone benches.

15. The ROSE BOWL (open free when not in use), north of the junction of Arroyo Blvd. and Salvia Canyon Rd., is the stadium in which the annual New Year’s Day football game is played, the concluding event of the Tournament of Roses. The spacious grounds about the bowl, enclosed within a high steel fence, are planted to a great variety of roses and green shrubbery. The bowl, built in 1922, seats 85,000 and is illuminated with floodlights for night performances. Commencement exercises of the Pasadena city schools, local football and baseball games, political rallies, and other events are held here.

16. DEVIL’S GATE DAM, across the top of which La Canada Verdugo Road passes, is a concrete structure built across the Arroyo Seco channel at Devil’s Gate, a narrow gap in a spur of the San Rafael Hills which takes its name from a natural rock sculpture on the canyon wall suggesting a devil’s head. The dam, a unit of the Los Angeles County flood control projects, was built in 1920 to control the heavy seasonal run-off from the San Gabriel Mountains.

CHRISTMAS TREE LANE (lighted 5-10 p.m. Christmas Eve to New Years night), is a double row of deodar trees stretching for more than a mile along Santa Rosa Ave., from Woodbury Rd. north to Foothill Blvd. At night, during the Christmas holidays, the trees are illuminated with colored lights, and draw huge throngs of spectators. While the trees are illuminated, the cars of sightseers proceed three or four abreast with their lights off. Planted about 1888, the tall trees are mature and almost uniform in height.

17. The ST. ELIZABETH CATHOLIC CHURCH (open), NW. corner Woodbury Rd. and N. Lake Ave., is a white stucco building of medieval Spanish design with California mission features. A plain square tower rising above the red tile roof is topped with an open-arched belfry. Above the wide arched doorway is a baroque niche with an image of St. Elizabeth.

Inside, at the back of the altar, a screen of baroque design frames a painting of St. Elizabeth, and against the wall at each side of the sanctuary are large statues, one of St. Joseph, and the other of St. Francis of Assisi. The sculptured figure of Jesus stands in front of the sanctuary. These figures and the stations of the cross along the side walls of the nave are by woodcarvers of Oberammergau, Germany.

18. The WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (adm. by arrangement), 1757 N. Lake Ave., is of modified French Gothic design. Tall, gray, severe, it towers in strong perpendicular lines above its parish buildings on landscaped grounds that cover a city block. Its single tower, square and buttressed, is surmounted with an octagonal belfry pierced by narrow lancet arches. The church and its buildings are of concrete, with gray stone facing; the roofs are of dark slate. Above the entrance is a rose window 16 feet in diameter.

The vault over the nave, immensely high, long, and narrow, is a rich rust-red with small gold figures. The blue-vaulted apse, also high and narrow, has a tall stained glass window. The brilliant colors of great circular windows, one above the entrance and one at each end of the transept, are best seen from the sanctuary.