Pasadena old & new - Pasadena, California - includes visitor's guide

Sunset, Jan, 1994 by Peter Fish

THE CITY THAT BROUGHT GRACEFUL LIVING TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MAY LEAD THE WAY INTO THE NEXT CENTURY

It is nine o'clock on one of those Friday nights when all of Southern California seems to exhale a collective sigh and decide the weekend begins now. On one corner a guy in dreadlocks is dragging Beethoven to the Caribbean, pounding out Moonlight Sonata on steel drums. Down the block compete the flute notes of two Peruvian folk ensembles. Crowding the sidewalks are dual-career couples with linen suits and cellular phones, teen throngs with backward caps and skateboards, families of four tending dripping ice cream cones, and a scattering of chic twenty-somethings you think you may have seen on last week's episode of "Melrose Place." All here on Colorado Boulevard, in Pasadena.

Pasadena?

That's right. Traditionally the world has paid attention to Pasadena only on January 1, when the rose Parade makes its stately floral advance through the heart of town and the Pac 10 and Big Ten champs battle in the Tournament of Roses. Now the tournament must share the sports spotlight with soccer's World Cup, to be played here in June, and Pasadena is drawing attention year-round. The staid haven of the trust fund, the nurtured golf swing, and the blue rinse has become, well, cool. For Pasadena, this mass popularity is exciting but a little unsettling. Accustomed to being respected, Pasadena is not so accustomed to being considered fun.

Much of the best of California life was born in this city northeast of Los Angeles. From its bungalows came the idea that, in California's gentle climate, indoors and outdoors were equally suited to civilized habitation, and the works of nature might inspire those of man. Caltech laboratories helped demonstrate that advanced science could make a region prosper. Now Pasadena may offer new lessons for the rest of us. Like Moonlight Sonata essayed on steel drums, Pasadena is a classic being given a new and unexpected beat.

THE CROWN OF THE VALLEY REGAINS ITS LUSTER

In the beginning, there were the mountains, a dry gulch, and the sun. The mountains were the San Gabriels, which rise to 8,000- and 9,000-foot peaks at the city's back. The dry gulch was, in more euphonious Spanish, Arroyo Seco, which sidles down from the San Gabriels to form a sycamore-shaded draw at the city's western edge. And the sun was the lure that pulled snow-weary Easterners here from across the continent. The first large-scale American encampment came with the Indiana Colony, which established itself on the former Rancho San Pasqual in the 1870s. The Hoosiers bear responsibility for the city's name, which has no relation to California whatsoever but is alleged to be part of a Chippewa Indian phrase meaning "crown of the valley." Regional origin aside, it at least does justice to the city's setting, which is as fine as any in Southern California, lack of beachfront notwithstanding.

Soon wealthy Chicagoans and New Yorkers were using Pasadena as their playground, arriving first as winter visitors to the new crop of resort hotels--the Raymond, the Green, and later the Huntington--then as residents who turned Orange Grove Boulevard into millionaires' row.

The presence of so many residents with expensive tastes and the means to satisfy them ensured that even today this city of 135,000 looks larger than it is. Its Mediterranean revival City Hall is as grandly domed as some state capitols, and the Colorado Street Bridge arching across Arroyo Seco could be an approach to Imperial Rome. The California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, founded in 1891 as Throop University, is one of the preeminent scientific institutions in the world. Cultural facilities like the Norton Simon Museum of Art, and, in nearby San Marino, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens are big league, not Triple A.

Still, by the late 1970s, Pasadena's resume was more impressive than its reality. Those beautiful San Gabriel peaks trapped auto emissions to create summer smog levels as bad as any in the Los Angeles Basin. The Colorado Street Bridge was declared earthquake-vulnerable and threatened with demolition; on the drawing boards were two mammoth office towers that would block views of City Hall. And the city's downtown core--14 blocks of commercial buildings dating back to the 1890s--had degenerated into a string of pawn shops and X-rated theaters ripe for the wrecking ball.

Sue Mossman of Pasadena Heritage recalls how the private preservation organization was founded in 1976 to fight the threat to downtown. "We had already seen so many other historic buildings taken out in Pasadena. When we saw what we were losing, we began to think, Is there a better alternative?" Heritage began sponsoring walking tours to promote downtown's architectural charms. Eventually it got the Civic Center and downtown--now christened Old Pasadena--placed on The National Register of Historic Places. By this time the city also had gotten into the preservation act. A new downtown plan encouraged owners to strengthen, not demolish, historic buildings. Amenities such as lighting and parking were added.