Welcome to Bungalow Heaven
Walking street-to-street in this Pasadena neighborhood is good for the soul.
By Kris Grant
In the northeast sector of Pasadena, where the city begins its gentle rise into the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, lies an amazing collection of some 800 bungalow homes, most of which were built between 1900 and the 1930s.
Many are still intact and many more are in various stages of restoration. Most are modest one- and two-story Craftsman-architecture homes; other styles dotting the district include Queen Anne and Gothic-, Spanish-, Colonial- and English-Revival.
Welcome to heaven…bungalow heaven, that is, a place where dreams are made for anyone interested in the history of the Arts & Crafts movement as well as the history of Pasadena.
As part of the annual Pasadena Heritage Weekend, two-hour walking tours of Bungalow Heaven (its name was coined by a city architect in the 1970s) provided up close and personal stories from knowledgeable docents on the homes, the area and elements of Craftsman styling.
Four homes along the tour route were opened up for interior views and included interviews with architects, homeowners and structural engineers on the right (and wrong) way to renovate properties. Many tour goers traveled from other areas of Los Angeles and neighboring counties to secure tips for renovating their own Craftsman homes.
Bungalow Heaven was the first historic district in Pasadena, designated in 1989, following more than four years of work by neighborhood residents of the four-block area who dedicated themselves to preserving its look and feel. Many of the residents were driven in their preservation efforts after witnessing development of massive condominium projects along Washington Boulevard, now one of the district’s boundary streets, which replaced original bungalow homes and were incongruous with the texture of the neighborhood.
In 2008 Bungalow Heaven was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Last month, Bungalow Heaven received a “20th anniversary” present of sorts: the American Planning Association named it one of America’s Top Ten Great Neighborhoods for 2009 – the only one in California that was cited in the APA’s flagship program that celebrates places of “great character, quality and planning.”
The APA called the Bungalow Heaven conservation plan a “model for citywide restoration policies; the plan strives to eliminated unnecessary demolition, stipulates when restoration or modification requires historic preservation review and stimulates the area’s health.”
Here you’ll find most houses clad in similar materials – clapboard, shingles and stucco – Brick and stone, including Arroyo river-rock boulders used generously on foundations, porches, chimneys and fireplaces and retaining walls. Repetition of gabled rooflines and nearly ubiquitous presence of wide front porches contribute to the neighborhood’s architectural character.
Each street in Bungalow Heaven features a different signature tree – camphor, California live oaks, Mexican fan palms and jacaranda among them – all of which form a dense tree canopy across the front yards, most of which are 50 feet wide with parking in the back of the homes. The result is a rich streetscape, the type you dream of raising a young family on, and during this Halloween month, the pumpkins, ghosts, bats and spider webs were adorning many a Craftsman porch.
Bungalow Heaven was also Pasadena’s fist green district, encouraging recycling and reuse activities and now the community is considering group purchases of solar installations.
The walking tour began at McDonald Park, itself a symbol of what a neighborhood can achieve when working together. In 1980 the north end was filled with water as a reservoir for the city. Drug dealers hung out here. Once the neighborhood took interest in the park, began planting trees and purchasing play equipments, it became a central meeting place. Now the park hosts annual Halloween parties, summer movie nights, puppet shows and community picnics.
Along Mentor Avenue, tour guide Lynn Kolberg, a 20-year volunteer for Pasadena Heritage, pointed out an “art stone” wall. Art stone, she reported, was sold to contractors because they were mixed and molded on site. Some of it was used in its natural state; sometimes it was painted. Next, Kolberg called attention to retaining walls of Arroyo stone, rounded river-rock stones indigenous to the San Gabriel lowlands. “It was part of the Craftsman philosophy to use local, natural materials,” Kolberg said.
She pointed to a recently restored home, and a front yard garden of native low-water plants. “This design attracts natural wildlife, another philosophy of the Craftsman movement being to bring nature closer to home,” she said. “You will see the drought-tolerant, native plants in a lot of our newer restoration projects around the neighborhood.”
Kolberg said that the single-story Craftsman design was a perfect choice for Pasadena homes, where overhanging eaves, cross ventilation, sleeping porches, outdoor verandas and wide front porches took advantage of the mild to warm climate.
Working-class families appreciated the bungalows’ livability and built-ins provided more space. Bungalow Heaven was part of Pasadena’s population boom that saw the city’s population quadruple from 10,000 to 45,000 between 1900 and 1920.
The area, which had earlier been agricultural land where citrus was the main crop, was annexed to the city of Pasadena in 1906 and a street grid and houses began filling in the area between existing farmhouses.
At the first house on the tour in the 800 block of Mentor, Ben Gonzalez of Classic Architectural Wood Restoration, gave a quick show-and-tell on the right and wrong way to strip wood. “I strip wood from walls in the same way you would strip it from an antique piece of furniture, Gonzalez said. “First, I remove layers of paint with a heat gun, not wire brushes. Then I use steel wool, not wire brushes.
Gonzalez shows a section of wall that had been stripped by another contractor using sander. He pointed out the leopard-like contrast of dark and light patterns of the wood – the dark being where the wood’s sap left darker impressions, and the soft wood became far light, more susceptible to the sander. Gonzalez plans to go back and restrip the wood.
As the group began to walk up Mar Vista Avenue, Kolberg explained that the street name is Spanish for “ocean view” and that, indeed, in the early days of development before the trees matured, one could see glimpses of the Pacific from the elevated foothill district.
She pointed out a Greene and Greene home, the only one in Bungalow Heaven, with a “No comment, reach your own conclusion.” She said it was one of the Greene brother’s earliest works and has been extensively altered over the years, ahem, “prior to the governance of the district.”
At an interior stop at a home on Mar Vista, Kolberg noted that it was one of about 10 homes built by W. A. Waldock. The original 1908 sales price: $1,800. The home is a 1 ½ story with a steeply pitched side-facing gable roof, a full front recessed porch, an Arroyo stone chimney, clapboard siding with shingles in the dormer and gable peaks. Decorative dentil courses across the gable ends that separate the upper and lower stories, and Craftsman frames around all windows and doors.
The house was repossessed by the bank in the 1970s and many inappropriate changes were made to “update” its style; then the house was resold and sold again in 1984 to Mary Gandsey, who owns a wood stripping and painting firm, the Dynamic Advantage. She demonstrated to the group how she is painstakingly renovating and matching paint colors. She too, removes paint with a heat gun, then chemicals, then hand-sanding, then staining and finally, varnish. She works with several pigments which she mixes with DAP putty. Gandsey demonstrated how she would put a bead of three colors on the side of her hand then cover nail holes with the appropriate mix. “Another problem I’ve had that comes with a house settling are big cracks in corners between built-ins and the walls,” she said. “Here I used a clear caulk that I mix with a super saturated stain.”
And then Gandsey turned her attention to the granite fireplace. “It was painted white,” she told the group to the sound of gasps. “And so I stripped it.”
But, she confessed, she wasn’t happy with the results. And so she climbed up on the roof, with her painter’s palette in hand, to examine the same stones used in the chimney and to capture their colors.
“And so I painted the fireplace,” she explained to an amazed crowd.
“You mean it’s a faux fireplace?” asked one tour goer.
“Yes,” Gandsey said. “I used French tapered brushes to get into the edges. I even painted the grout. And because granite has sparkly specks in it, I used just a little gold glitter.”
Kolberg calls the group’s attention to a 1910 home that is in the process of achieving national historic registry designation on its own. “So much of the original structure remains,” she explained, including an L-shaped porch, elephantine posts and a pergola over the driveway. The home is for rent: two bedrooms, one bath for $2,600 a month.
The homeowners, Joe and Molly Stephens, are eager to show off their 1910 Craftsman, built by Edward Zube, who built about a dozen homes here. The Stephens purchased the home this past March and are in the early stages of restoration. On the front porch they note metal poles that the previous owner had apparently installed to present the upper balcony from sagging. Instead, they’d prefer to remove them and replicate the side columns.
Inside, the Stephens has refinished the floors, but they have much work left to do on the walls, which they say was covered in wall-to-wall paneling of the ’60s era and covered most of the brick fireplace. “We didn’t even know we had a brick fireplace ‘till after we bought the house and removed the paneling,” said Holly.
Although the original casement windows are intact, said Joe, they have all been painted shut. “So we’re very safe,” Holly chirped.
The home yielded more discoveries for a couple young enough to be able to see their way through many happy years of future remodeling. “We found ghostliness showing us where bookshelves and colonnades were. And we know there was a bay window in the dining room and we will rebuild that,” said Joe. “And we found some of the original bathroom tile in the back yard.”
The couple didn’t realize that they had a walk- through closet until the former owner removed all their belongings.
Joe, who works for Yahoo, and Holly, an artist, say their next projects are to open those casement windows up and install the bay window.
As the tour proceeds along Michigan Avenue, Kolberg notes a “Boulder Bungalow” home by Coast Construction Co. Here, massive Arroyo stones form the porch foundation between piers of boulder and clinker brick. “It has a strong rustic effect,” she said. “Complete with a front porch deer.”
Coast Construction of Los Angeles secured 10 permits to frame bungalows on Michigan Avenue. Each was sold for about $2,900. And each home was somewhat different in is craftsmanship, allowing for individuality and an always interesting mix of residence on the same street.
Kolberg stops by a Hollywood bungalow apartment complex in the district. Although not a Craftsman style, Hollywood bungalows, she said, shared the simplicity of design feature and sense of community. “These were perfect for single residents or young couples, particularly people who were just getting situated in this area. Typically, Hollywood bungalows would have a central gathering area and maybe a room in the back for parties. They created, in essence, their own little community.”
At a final stop, Kolberg points out a 1920 bungalow, where a second story pops up like an airplane cockpit on a 747 and has been dubbed an “airplane bungalow.” “Of course, the house was built before airplanes were widely known of,” said Kolberg. “So the name came into being sometime later.” z
