In a brief time at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Pasadena was inspired to become more like a European village on the outskirts of Paris or Vienna, than a city in Southern California.  Pasadena today has more examples of Arts & Crafts architecture than anywhere else in the U.S.  The earliest European settlers to this fertile valley beneath the San Gabriel Mountains and a few miles above Los Angeles, established vineyards, orchards, and ranches.  However, by 1884, Pasadena began to attract the attention of railroad magnates, steel barons, and industrialists.  The Santa Fe Railway was brought in, there was a real estate boom, and great hotels such as Mansard Victorian and Wentworth were built, modeled after the magnificent country hotels of Europe, with spas, swimming pools, and riding trails.  By 1900, Easterners were arriving in large numbers, seeking relief from harsh winters, looking for sunlight and leisure.  The wealthiest hired famous architects such as Charles and Henry Greene, to design and build grand homes along the sycamore-lined boulevards.  By 1908, Pasadena had become a showcase for the Arts & Crafts Movement (American Craftsman Style).  Arts & Crafts, which began in England in response to mass-produced furniture, clothing, and jewelry, emphasized handmade artisanship, authentic materials, and meticulous detail.  Architects, captivated by the natural beauty of Pasadena, created an astonishing collection of timeless designs, houses, churches, winding cobblestone walkways, gardens, stonework arcades –using materials in harmony with the natural surroundings, ancient native trees, creek beds, and hilltops.  Design, material, and construction, were envisioned as intrinsic units of nature –gabled roofs, ornate doorways, carved stone facades, sleeping porches in the shadows of oak trees, cantilevered floors, tapered beam ends, rough cut woods in original color palettes, stained-glass windows and glass lanterns, cloisters, fountains, balconies, and idiosyncratic metalwork, were a continuous series of things that blended into each other.  Interior décor was the sacred art of color and texture –Persian rugs, textiles, transparent silks, laces, luxuriant velvets, tapestries, batik hangings, glass art, ironwork, mosaic tiles, Chinese porcelain, hand-rubbed hardwoods, stonework, 18th century French sculpture, drawings of wild flowers, crystal inkwells, Japanese woodblock prints, Mary Cassatt paintings, rare manuscripts, and books –which gives life to three-dimensional space.  This was design in its mythical-ancestral aspect, the purity and coherence of an archetypal image –not as something added as an afterthought.  The finest example of Arts & Crafts –simplicity of design, revival of handmade techniques, and harmony between construction and nature –is the Gamble House.  Built in 1908, the house and its furnishings were the magnum opus of Greene & Greene’s California bungalow design.  A varied sequence of contrasting wood grains such as oak, cedar, and maple, overlapping colors, art glass windows, natural textiles, and spaces opened to light and shade, create a sense of depth.  The revelation of the Gamble House design is simple –nature has no beginning and no end, there is nothing better than following nature, and anything else is nonsense.  Inside and out, graceful lines invite abandonment to dream, to the possibility of creation and new beginnings.  The interior blends seamlessly onto the outside, into garden, nature, trees, stones, sky, colors, and shapes –a design that lasts forever.

ART MUSEUMS & OTHER ATTRACTIONS

There are countless examples of how Pasadena embodies the power of color and light –red sunsets, Cypress trees, rosebuds, the range of blue tones from Indigo to turquoise in the play of clouds and shadows over the San Gabriel Mountains.  There is also the Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, a sanctuary of art, rare books, and 150 acres of themed gardens.  Here are some examples of the wide-ranging collection: the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Gutenberg Bible, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, John James Audubon’s Birds of America, The Blue Boy (c1770) –Jonathan Buttall, The Grand Canal, Venice (1837) –Joseph Mallord Turner, Satan, Sin, and Death (1806) –William Blake.  There is also the Norton Simon Museum, one of the world’s most extensive art collections, including Flight into Egypt (c1544) –Jacopo Bassano, Self-Portrait (c1636) –Rembrandt, Tulips in a Vase (c1890) –Paul Cézanne, Dancers in the Rotunda (1895) –Edgar Degas, Artist and Model (1939).  Other attractions include Blacker House, the largest and most ornamental of Greene & Greene’s handmade, wooden house designs; Castle Green, across from the old Santa Fe Depot, where wealthy Easterners disembarked for the winter cure; Pacific-Asia Museum, 5,000 years of art and artifacts from Asia and the Pacific Islands, including a Japanese house and Zen gardens; Pasadena City Hall, California Mediterranean style, with formal courtyard and fountain, patterned after the 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio.  In addition, Pasadena has many exquisite boutiques, European-style shops, fine restaurants, walking parks, and flower gardens.

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