Pasadena

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Places worth stopping at

With the app in your pocket, you get a note about each one as you walk by.

• Landmarks10›

  • Rose Bowl

    Myron Hunt's bowl, opened in 1922 and named after the Yale Bowl. It held the 1994 World Cup final; the flea market fills its lots on the second Sunday.

  • Holly Street Bridge

    This 1925 arch replaced a 1909 bridge so faulty it was condemned before use; Caltech students blew the old one up with TNT.

  • Colorado Street Bridge

    The 1913 bridge curves so its feet stand on solid ground. It carried Route 66; the high fence went up after decades as "Suicide Bridge".

  • Tournament House (the Wrigley mansion)

    Chewing-gum king William Wrigley's mansion is now the Rose Parade's headquarters. Volunteers from the rose society tend the gardens.

  • La Loma Bridge

    The Colorado Street Bridge's "little sister", 1914: for years the two were the only ways across the Arroyo in Pasadena.

  • Pasadena City Hall

    TV fans know the 1927 dome: Pawnee's city hall in Parks and Recreation. The whole building now sits on base isolators against earthquakes.

  • Pasadena Central Library

    Myron Hunt's Central Library, the Rose Bowl's architect again: dedicated on Lincoln's birthday 1927, the first Civic Center building finished.

  • Pasadena Civic Auditorium

    The 1931 Civic was the Emmy Awards' home from 1977 to 1997, and hosted American Idol's Hollywood Week.

  • Pasadena Playhouse

    The State Theatre of California since 1937. Its 1925 Spanish Colonial playhouse ran a drama school that trained Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman.

  • Caltech

    Caltech began in 1891 as Throop's vocational school in Old Pasadena. Today it runs NASA's JPL and counts 80 Nobel laureates.

• Houses & buildings10›

  • La Miniatura (Millard House)

    Frank Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura, 1924, down in its ravine: the first of his four LA houses built of patterned concrete blocks. A private home.

  • Gamble House

    Recognise it? The Gamble House played Doc Brown's mansion in Back to the Future. Inside, a teak panel in the hall is a hidden door to the kitchen.

  • Arroyo Terrace: the Greenes' street

    Seven of these eleven houses, built 1902–12, are by Charles and Henry Greene: the most concentrated cluster of their work in Pasadena.

  • Vista del Arroyo (Ninth Circuit Court)

    The bell tower over the Arroyo was the Vista del Arroyo resort hotel's, 1930. An Army hospital in the war; now a federal appeals court.

  • Merritt mansion, Millionaires' Row

    A US Steel chairman's $1.1 million villa, 1905–08, on what locals called Millionaires' Row. It opened every episode of TV's The Millionaire.

  • Batchelder House

    Ernest Batchelder's 1910 chalet-like bungalow: his first tile shop was here, making tiles for Greene and Greene. Chamber concerts played in the back garden.

  • Raymond Theatre (Perkins Palace)

    As Perkins Palace, 1979–91, this 1921 theatre was a rock venue: Phil Collins and RATT recorded live albums here.

  • Castle Green (Hotel Green)

    Castle Green, the surviving wing of the 1893 Hotel Green: the Valley Hunt Club and the Tournament of Roses both started out here.

  • Scottish Rite Cathedral

    Look for the guardian sphinxes: the Scottish Rite's 1925 Moderne temple, built for a branch of Freemasonry.

  • First Trust Building

    The 1927 First Trust bank hides an engineering first: a Caltech professor's steel-and-concrete frame that became a standard for earthquake building.

• Museums3›

  • Fenyes Estate

    On Millionaires' Row: Dr. Fenyes, Pasadena's first doctor with an X-ray machine, built here in 1905. Later Finland's consulate; now history museum tours.

  • Norton Simon Museum

    Rodin's big bronzes stand out front; round the back, a sculpture garden around a pond. This was the Pasadena Art Museum, where Warhol had his West Coast museum debut.

  • USC Pacific Asia Museum

    Grace Nicholson's "Treasure House", given to the city in 1943, now holds some 15,000 works from Asia and the Pacific.

• Art2›

  • Armory Center for the Arts

    Art classes and shows in the old armory. It grew from the Pasadena Art Museum's 1947 education department.

  • Jackie & Mack Robinson Memorial

    Two 9-foot bronze heads: Jackie faces east toward Brooklyn; his brother Mack, who stayed and worked for the city, faces City Hall.

• Stories2›

  • Holly Street Livery Stable

    The odd trapezoid shape is because the 1904 stable was built against the Santa Fe tracks. Early Rose Parade floats were built here.

  • Bekins roof sign

    Look up: the 1926 Bekins sign, neon since 1929, was aimed at drivers on Fair Oaks, then Route 66. Pasadena's last big pre-war rooftop sign.

• Churches1›

  • All Saints Church

    All Saints, one of the largest Episcopal churches in the US and known for its activism: "in the DNA of the church", a former rector said.

• Parks1›

  • Memorial Park

    Start here, off the train: Memorial Park, where Pasadena's first public library stood. The A Line runs in a trench at its edge.

• Streets & shops2›

  • Old Pasadena

    Pasadena's first downtown, decayed by the 1970s and saved as a historic district. Caltech and JPL began nearby, hence "Athens of the West".

  • Vroman's Bookstore

    Vroman's, founded 1894: Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore, with some 400 free events a year.

Walks

Start a walk in the app and put your phone away. It tells you when you reach each stop.

• Walk

  From Memorial Park station: Old Town and the Civic Center

  12 stops · 3.8 km · 1 hr 30

  Off the A Line at Memorial Park: the Armory and the Raymond, the livery stable, Old Pasadena and Castle Green, then east to City Hall, the Robinson memorial, the Central Library, All Saints and the…

• Walk

  Down the Arroyo

  13 stops · 6.6 km · 2 hr

  From the Rose Bowl down the rim of the Arroyo: Wright's La Miniatura, the Gamble House and the Greenes' street, the Fenyes estate, three bridges, the Norton Simon, the Vista del Arroyo,…

• Walk

  Playhouse District to Caltech

  5 stops · 2.9 km · 1 hr

  East along Colorado from the Scottish Rite's sphinxes: the Playhouse, Vroman's, the First Trust bank, then south to Caltech.

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