PASADENA – Three of the city’s oldest established neighborhoods, all in Northwest Pasadena and all with small pockets of houses dating from their earliest days, have been officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The designations follow a two-year effort to identify houses built here between 1883 and 1904 in a project funded by a $25,000 state grant, city planner Kevin Johnson said Tuesday.
“It’s similar to the mid-century modern district project we did a few years ago,” Johnson said. “We did a research project where we studied the period from the beginning of the settlement of the city to 1904, which is, generally speaking, when the Craftsman period took off.”
In addition, nine houses in
areas of the city from Lida to East Villa streets have been awarded individual national historic designation, Johnson said.
The largest of the three new historic districts is Raymond-Summit, a cluster of 25 buildings in what’s described as “higher style” examples of building from the era, in styles including Queen Anne, American Foursquare and Shingle.
The Bristol-Cypress Historic District, with 17 properties, and the 12 in the New Fair Oaks Historic District – both in the Lincoln Triangle area – are more modest one- and two-story houses in Vernacular Hipped, Gable Cottage and Folk Victorian styles, according to the survey.
They bring the city’s total to 18 districts listed on the National Register, and 18 Pasadena
Landmark Districts designated by the City Council.
“The city deserves credit for working hard to develop the individual nominations for each of these buildings” as part of the complex process, said Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage.
“These little clusters are really the earliest neighborhoods – before the Craftsman era, and when Pasadena was pretty small,” Mossman said. “They were modest working-class neighborhoods that miraculously have survived, and they really show what Pasadena looked like in its earliest days.”
Johnson said the city applied for the district designations after making sure there was neighborhood support.
“We notified all the property owners early on, and let them know we were determining if the neighborhoods were eligible for listing,” Johnson said. “We had some neighborhood meetings and we did mailers, and had a website for them to keep track of what was going on with the project.”
The response showed a “pretty clear majority” supported the applications, Johnson said. “There was no opposition to it at any stage, once we defined the boundaries and determined which properties were included.”
The biggest benefit in having a historic designation is the assurance that the neighborhood’s character will be preserved, Johnson said. But there’s also the “potential for financial benefit” in property tax reductions through the Mills Act for homeowners agreeing to do specific work over 10 years.
Although some properties need work, most of the houses in the new districts are well cared for, Johnson said.
Several of the historic houses now given individual National Register designation may be familiar to locals, Mossman said, including Hillmont, built in 1887 at 1375 E. Mountain St., and the stylish 1893 Friend Lacey House at 679 E. Villa St.
Ken Grobecker said having his home, the 1893 James Fielding Cosby House on Locke Haven Street, on the National Register of Historic places is the fulfillment of a dream.
“This is my life story – I’ve been with this house 45 years,” Grobecker said Tuesday. “It’s a saga!”
He first saw the house – boarded up and vandalized – as an architecture student at USC, he said, and was eventually able to move it from Los Angeles to Pasadena in 1982. The elaborate Queen Anne-style house now sits adjacent to the Wrigley Mansion.
“When it was in L.A. it couldn’t be a landmark nominated by the city because the landowner at the time objected,” he recalled. “We moved it here in 1982 and it couldn’t be a landmark because moved houses were not eligible.”
This time, he said, the city went ahead with the nomination for the “remarkably intact” house.
“I’m very grateful – we’re so excited,” he said. “One of those days we’ll have a `topping out’ when we’ve finished all the work – I’m not sure I’m going to make it!”
For complete information on the designated districts and properties, visit cityofpasadena.net/chrid.
janette.williams@sgvn.com
626-578-6300, ext. 4482