Homes Sweet Homes

I've been charmed by the homes in South Pasadena ever since my husband and I actually bought one of them and moved here 8 years ago!  I made the video above several years ago, highlighting some of the varied and beautiful houses around town.  I've been busily shooting more home pictures, so there will be a Part 2 video coming very soon.

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Behind the Window

A rocking chair, maybe. And a beat up Duncan Phyfe side table. (There might be a Blackberry on it, but it's turned off.) Maybe a little Debussy is playing, there is possibly a hint of something roasting with rosemary and garlic. Tea is a good idea, but wine is better. The stack of mail can wait, but someone needs to feed the cat.

Caption this photo (#32)

Have at it, folks...

Dollhouse

The gingerbread trim and purple gable make this house seem like something out of a fairy tale. And since it's getting closer to Halloween, perhaps a tale like this, from poet John Reibetanz:

The Finger Puppets in the Attic Dollhouse

If they, more petite
than the mice whose flittings
have pillaged their robes’ sparkled trim,

stood tiptoe
on the plumped felt tops
of their thimble-sized footstools

to scrutinize
the worn fabric
of this room’s blue distances,

would they locate
the source of lightning bolts
in our faces’ wrinkled pleats

and construe the stars’
dance from the tattered
embroidery of our steps,

or find in our seamless
unravelling years
the tissue of apocalypse?

Homespun

One of the reasons South Pasadena feels so comforting and homey is because it is loaded with old houses like this. I mean really now ... just look at this place! It just begs you to slow down, grab a glass of lemonade and unplug from the frenzied digital age. And don't kill my buzz by telling me the people who live here probably have a 60 inch high def TV mounted on one of those 110 year old walls, or that they use the original sun porch to access Twitter from their netbooks. You're probably right. But that's not what I imagine when I drive by.

In my mind this house is inhabited by characters out of Edith Wharton or Henry James. And the same goes for the neighboring houses. The dream of those candlelit parlours and spinet sonatinas makes me feel a little less frazzled after a long day when I unwind in my own 110 year old home. It's like everyone who lives here has sworn to uphold an unspoken pact. We preserve our old buildings and take care of our heritage trees and cheerfully call the plumber when our 19th century pipes burst so that we can make sure that we all get to live in a place that looks like a setting for plays by Thorton Wilder or films by Frank Capra.

When my family moved from West LA to South Pas, we spent the first few months in giddy sense of shock. Sure, the San Gabriel Valley is only 25 miles down the 10 and 110 freeways, but it's light years away in terms of architectural charm. (The vintage streetlamps! A million Craftsman houses! Bricks! Check out all of the wonderful old bricks!) I'm sure the spell wears off after a while. But I've been here almost two years and I'm still not over it.

A Taste of Yellow

Here's a little something for those of you who have emailed me asking for more pictures of Victorian era South Pasadena homes. The neighborhoods around the library and all over the Mission West District are loaded with wonderful little cottages like this. They're often overshadowed by those famous Craftsman scene stealers, but they're every bit as beautiful.

Houses like this represent a kind of homespun turn-of-the-last-century American gestalt. (Note: there's not only a rocker but also a porch swing! Bring on the lemonade and apple pie...) When we see this cheery yellow house, it's hard not to reminisce about the past, about childhood, or maybe just imagine the way we wish things once were. I'll let poet Raymond A. Foss sum it up:

Forsythia blooms
plucked from the bush
a sudden jolt
back to when I was six
walking to kindergarten
petals curl on my tongue
a taste of yellow
like the first time
forty years ago

Gilded Age Gem

History buffs, take note! I must pass along a couple of interesting websites...

The Victorian Web and Victoriana.com are two of the most comprehensive resources for all things 19th Century. I happily lost a few hours exploring these sites, after shooting pictures of a few more South Pas Victorian treasures.

Victorian homes are wonderfully complex examples of the 19th Century's broad and expansive age. No Victorian house is ever exactly what it appears to be from the curb. You'll always discover weird little details, and possibly a few secret passageways. That's what's so much fun about this period in history with its upheaval of hierarchical order and experimentation with so many artistic, philosophical and literary styles. The Victorian era was much more than corsets and smelling salts. It was the bridge from antiquity into modern times. Maybe that's why houses like this feel both old and new at the same time.

House Blend

After my recent focus on Craftsman architecture, I thought I'd break things up with a bit of Victorian. But wouldn't you know it? Arts and Crafts style still managed to sneak in. Look at the geometric positioning of slats in the porch railing, and notice the Craftsman-style windows. I love how these two designs merged a bit in the very early part of the 20th Century before Craftsman became more common.

UPDATE: Mister Earl -- my fabulous reader and researcher supreme -- discovered this great information about the house and a tour of the interior right here. Now I love the place even more!

Blue Victorian

I know, I know... South Pasadena is known for it's Craftsman architecture. But I just can't help but go on an Easter egg hunt to find yet another unusually colorful structure. What's not to love about this blue Victorian house with lavender and white trim? To me, this place is absolutely literary. In fact, when Virginia Woolf imagined a room of her own, I have a feeling it might have looked something like that lovely one up there with the open window.

Little Pink House

This cheerful cottage in the historic Mission West area always makes me smile. Like the boldly colored apartment buildings on Mound Street, this place happily flaunts its unexpected paint choice amid more subdued neighbors. (Hey, I think I hear John Mellancamp playing right about now…)

If This House Could Talk...

Charming turn-of-the-century homes like this are usually associated with quaint and more simple times. We all accept the Victorian stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood: the one with all those tight corsets, tea parties, waistcoats and fresh baked pies. But whenever I see a late Victorian house like this, I imagine what topics of the day may have been discussed around its early dinner table. Were there arguments about the revolutionary new ideas of Freud, or Marx? Darwin, or Neitzsche? Did parents wring hands over their children's interest in Schoenberg's shocking atonal ending to his Second String Quartet? (These kids today! And their crazy music!) Were there passionate discussions about the outlandish new theory of relativity? Women's suffrage? Those scandalous Impressionist painters?

Houses like this were built by the generation that brought modernism to the world stage. And that's not exactly quaint or simple. That's actually quite radical!