Mystery History -- Solved!

I'm calling a tie between Karin with her 7:53 a.m. Tuesday guess "The city is moving a historic bungalow court to a new location. I think it may be the court that's now located off Orange Grove a little west of Lincoln" and Diana who brought it home with her 7:08 p.m. Tuesday guess "Gartz Court."

In the 1984 photo above, a woman looks on as one of five historic Gartz Court bungalows at 270 N. Madison Ave. is readied to be transported on a slow, overnight journey three miles across town to 740 N. Pasadena Ave. It took two nights to complete the move.
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One of the original bungalow courts in Pasadena, Gartz Court was threatened with demolition when the property was purchased by Montgomery Engineering Co. in 1983 to make way for a new headquarters complex.

Built in 1910 and designed by Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, Gartz Court was saved from the wrecking ball when Pasadena Heritage partnered for the first time with the City of Pasadena to identify a suitable property in Northwest Pasadena for the bungalow court and sell the units as affordable housing to first-time homebuyers with moderate incomes.

De Bretteville & Polyzoides, which would later become Moule & Polyzoides, was hired to supervise the big move and design the restoration and expansion of Gartz Court once it was in place at its new location.

Six families live in Gartz Court now, an opportunity that never would have existed had it not been for the inimitable Claire Bogaard, co-founder of Pasadena Heritage, reaching out to Terry Tornek, the City of Pasadena planning director at the time, with a revolutionary idea for a partnership.

And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Many thanks to Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News, Pasadena Museum of History, Pasadena Heritage, City of Pasadena, Moule & Polyzoides, American Bungalow.

Mystery History -- Solved!

 

Barbara wins with her11:38 Tuesday guess "Elks Lodge after the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake; the chimney has collapsed. It's October, and that's how we know it wasn't the reindeer"

In the 1987 photo above, a portion of the stately Elks Lodge at 400 W. Colorado Boulevard, including the roof and chimney, has been severely damaged by the Whittier Narrows earthquake. There was damage to other parts of the building as well.

Here is the Elks Lodge today:

And a side-by-side comparison with the top photo:

The Elks Lodge, at the southeast corner of Colorado and Orange Grove boulevards, was designed by Myron Hunt and built in 1911. To this day it has an active membership. The property is perhaps best known by non-members as everybody's favorite parking spot for the Colorado Street Bridge Party and "media corner" during the Rose Parade.

The 5.9 Whittier Narrows quake killed eight people on Oct. 1, 1987, and caused widespread damage, especially in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles. Property damage estimates throughout the affected areas totaled $358 million. The quake was felt throughout Southern California and southern Nevada.

This article in the New York Times gives a good account of the widespread damage. Most of the buildings that collapsed had been constructed with unreinforced masonry.  

Most unreinforced masonry buildings were built before 1933, predating modern earthquake-resistant design. Bricks were not strengthened with embedded steel bars.

Miraculously, two people inside Fair Oaks Automotive at 101 S. Fair Oaks Ave. in Pasadena survived when the unreinforced masonry building collapsed as a result of the quake:

 

The north wall of the building fell over onto parked cars, which were flattened:

This is what the building (the yellow one) looked like before the quake:

If you're interested in what Building Code regulations say about unreinforced masonry structures, click here.

Many thanks to Chris and Kevin and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner,

Mystery History -- Solved!

Petrea wins with her 9:33 p.m. Wednesday guess "...these are students at Ambassador College, on the little bridge that crosses the waterfall..."  

In the 1985 photo above, a couple stands on a bridge overlooking the waterfall flowing into the stream that runs through the Ambassador College campus.

Founded in 1947 by Herbert W. Armstrong, Ambassador College was a four-year liberal arts college that became the headquarters of Worldwide Church of God.

Various lots were consolidated within a four-block area at the time to incorporate several mansions dating from 1905 to the 1920s along the east side of "Millionaires Row" on South Orange Grove Boulevard. These became the campus buildings.

("Millionaires Row" also includes such iconic homes as the Wrigley Mansion, Fenyes Mansion, the Gamble House and the Cravens Estate, though these are not on the Ambassador property.)

As the college population grew, more structures became necessary, including additional classrooms, administrative offices, dorms and television studios.

The architecture and planning firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM) was commissioned in 1963 to develop the campus master plan that includes the mid-century modern structures we all know well today. . .

 . . .and the magnificent Ambassador Auditorium, built in 1972 and known as the Carnegie Hall of the West.

I had the privilege of seeing performances at Ambassador Auditorium by Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Cecilia Bartoli, Mel Torme, Yo-Yo Ma and so many others. (And it was the site of "Hollywood Week" during this season's American Idol.)

Landscape architect Garrett Eckbo designed Ambassador College's lush gardens, walkways, fountains and the stream, all of which are an iconic part of the Pasadena landscape to this day .

 A change in the tithing policy for Worldwide Church of God abruptly sent the funding for Ambassador College and Ambassador Auditorium into a nosedive.

As a result, Ambassador College and Ambassador Auditorium closed in 1997* and the educational functions were consolidated with operations in Big Sandy, Texas.

Worldwide Church of God put the 49-acre campus on the market in 1999,

Maranatha High School purchased part of the south portion near Del Mar and St. John Avenue in 2004 and moved there from the William Carey University campus (which is in my 'hood).

That same year Ambassador Auditorium, on St. John Avenue near Green Street, was saved when it was purchased by Harvest Rock Church, which conducts services there. It is also the venue for concerts and other events, including Pasadena Symphony concerts.

The City of Pasadena's West Gateway Specific Plan encourages thoughtful development with a focus on arts, culture and education in areas immediately west of downtown Pasadena.

Here are the boundaries of the specific plan; the former Ambassador campus is between Orange Grove Boulevard and St. John Avenue, from Green Street to the north to Del Mar Boulevard to the south.

After a series of fits and starts, including the foreclosure of one developer's interests and the scrapping of plans for a senior complex when that company pulled out, City Ventures purchased much of what is now known as Ambassador West in 2010 for market-rate residential projects.

Construction is underway on the Del Mar side near Orange Grove (I shot this photo yesterday afternoon):

Another proposed project is in the permitting phase for a portion along Orange Grove south of Green Street.

A third project, proposed near the Italian Gardens on the Green Street side near Orange Grove, is well on its way through design review.

And there is another in the initial planning stages for the Green Street side near St. John Avenue.

The Ambassador West plan, approved by the City Council in 2007, calls for the preservation of two acres of existing park-like open space as well as the stream, historic gardens and mansions plus 80 percent of the trees.

*Radio and television broadcasts of Armstrong's "The World Tomorrow" program were taped in state-of-the-art studios on the Ambassador College campus. I was wowed when I saw the studio facilities for the first time. When the campus operations closed in 1997 I literally begged Ambassador College brass to donate the TV cameras, anchor desks and other equipment to KPAS, but no such luck.


Many thanks to Pasadena Museum of History, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, City of Pasadena, West Pasadena Residents' Association and Downtown Pasadena Neighborhood Association.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Roberta wins with her 8:24 a.m. Tuesday guess "Kidspace and the old ant trail?"

In the 1986 photo above, children climb the Ant Wall at the original location of Kidspace Children's Museum inside the McKinley School gymnasium where they were located for 20 years.

In a move that was somewhat controversial at the time, Kidspace relocated in 2004 to the former
Fannie E. Morrison Horticultural Center, which they spent five years renovating and expanding inside and out in Brookside Park.

The horticultural center, designed by Fitch Harrison Haskell and funded by wealthy widow Fannie Demmon Morrison, became the first site in the western U.S. of major flower shows. These took place for many years. There were four buildings, three of which remain (a fourth was lost to fire in 1984)

When it became vacant, it was used for storage by the City of Pasadena.

Fannie Morrison was born in Wisconson in 1871 and raised in suburban Boston. Her father was the treasurer of a copper mining company and her husband, Barnabus T. Morrison, whom she married in 1899, was the treasurer of a rubber mill. She lived at 425 S. San Rafael Ave. in Pasadena.

Prior to moving to Pasadena, she was actively involved in suburban Boston civic affairs and was instrumental in improving the Demmon-Morrison mansion and coach house, which is now the home of Regis College.

The new Kidspace complex, which opened in 2004, has five times more square footage than the McKinley gym. The 3.5-acre site also includes gardens and outdoor exhibits designed to expose children to the Arroyo Seco environment.

  

 

 

 

Many thanks to Pasadena Museum of History, Kidspace Children's Museum and Regis College.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Liz came closest with her 10:40 a.m. Tuesday guess "Putting up the atrium armature for Dr Albert Fenyes mansion on Orange Grove."

In the photo above, a crane delivers the new metal structure for the solarium skylight at the Fenyes Mansion on the grounds of the Pasadena Museum of History in the 1980s.

The original skylight had suffered damage over the years and was replaced with a stronger framework of structural steel.

Here's the solarium in more recent times. Note a portion of the skylight at the top:

Now the mansion, built in 1906, is closed for renovations again, It will reopen this fall.

There are stockpiles of historical information inside the mansion as well as in the PMH archives. I'll let you explore online info at your leisure.

One fact that some people aren't aware of is that Eva Schott Fenyes was a talented painter who studied art in New York, Europe and Egypt. Learn more about that in this article in the spring 2012 edition of the Society of California Archivists newsletter. 

Her good friend Charles Lummis encouraged her to visit and paint all of the California missions, fearing they might disappear over time. She did just that. Here's her watercolor painting of the San Diego Mission de Alcala, painted in 1907.

And many people don't know that Dr. Adalbert Fenyes, in addition to being a Hungarian nobleman and practicing physician, was a renowned entomologist who traveled the world collecting beetle specimens. His important beetle collection is housed at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Here's a rare photo of Dr. Fenyes in his "insectorium" in the gardens at the mansion:

And here are Adalbert and Eva on their wedding day in Budapest in 1896.

I posted a related Mystery History on my Pasadena PIO blog in January 2010.

And now we're back on track with Mystery History on the Ann Erdman blog! Keep checking back...

Many thanks to the Pasadena Museum of History.