It’s been a while since “Trip of the Week” but slowly it is returning. Last week I attended the Travel and Adventure Convention and began collecting ideas for this years day trips and backpacking adventures. Next month I will be spending a week in Atlanta, Georgia so be sure to visit back for an update. This week, trip of the week returns with a day trip to Old Pasadena. When most people hear Pasadena they think of the Rose Parade and Rosebowl Football Game.

Old Pasadena is the original commercial center of Pasadena. The area housed, schooled and provided stomping grounds for numerous famous and infamous free thinkers, poets, artists and rapscallions such as General George Patton, Alexander Calder, Upton Sinclair, L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, Albert Einstein, Bobby Fischer and ultimately, David Lee Roth. It was also the home to Andy Warhol's west coast debut, the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art (one of the earliest and best modern art museums in the country, now the Norton Simon Museum), and before that a center of suffragist and pacifist movements, and other liberal causes. By the late 1940's, the area was on death's door, blighted by flop houses, seedy bars and pawn shops. It later became a hippie mecca with head shops, adult bookstores and massage parlors. By the late 1980's, urban renewal was in full swing with the trendy set.

The Historic Old Pasadena District was chartered in 1980 as a means of revitalizing the oldest part of Pasadena which had fallen derelict though not abandoned, but was for all intents and purposes economically and commercially dead. in 1983.

It was here that the first of the businesses of the original Indiana Colony were established. Barney Williams had opened his general store on the Northwest corner. It served as the main supplier for the town as well as the post office when mail came up from Los Angeles. Barney's Ltd. Restaurant on Colorado near De Lacey St. is named for this store

On the Southwest corner was the Grand Hotel. This was replaced by the Dodsworth Building in 1902 and that building now houses the popular Cheesecake Factory.

In its infancy, the Indiana Colony was a quiet farming community centered around Orange Grove Avenue, about a half mile west of Fair Oaks. Fair Oaks just south of Colorado Blvd. was a fine place to build a school, a gift from Benjamin "Don Benito" Wilson. Simply called the Fair Oaks schoolhouse, it soon became exposed to the bustling activity of the developing center of town. Fearing for the safety of children, the council of city fathers sought to move the schoolhouse, but its benefactor, Mr. Wilson had died and his estate was willed to family members still living in the area. The council sought permission from the family with a proviso that they would move the building immediately now for the benefit of the children, and build a finer new school somewhere outside the Old Town area soon thereafter.

Modern attempts to ascertain the location to which the school was moved was all but lost. But the block of Fair Oaks, Colorado Blvd., Raymond Ave. and Green St. were somehow always referred to as the "schoolhouse block."."

In 1887 one Mr. E. C. Webster began construction of a hotel on the southeast corner of Raymond Avenue and Kansas Street (1929 Green St.) When he was unable to complete the job, a newcomer to the area, Col G. G. Green, took over the construction and finished the Green Hotel, which opened in 1888.

Green was a friend of Mr. Andrew McNally, a prominent printer from Chicago who had moved West and made his home in Altadena. McNally had invited the Colonel to come out and join him in this new community. Together Green and McNally invested heavily in the short-lived Altadena Railroad, which provided them private sidings at their residences and which Col. Green rode daily to the construction site of his new hotel. Col. Green and Andrew McNally were next door neighbors on Mariposa Street just west of Lake Ave. The McNally home still stands and the old Green Carriage house remains and can be seen from the rear parking lot of the Altadena Library. The old Green carriage house is currently occupied as a residence.

The new Green Hotel was a mammoth 6-story edifice that faced Central Park on South Raymond, just north of the original Victorian Pasadena Train Station, where trains stopped on their way between Chicago and Los Angeles. That station was replaced by the current station, in the Southwestern style.

In 1898 Green built an even more impressive Mediterranean style hotel on the opposite side of Raymond. The first became referred to as the annex, and the second became the winter home for some of the most prominent magnates of industry in the Eastern United States. The two buildings were connected by a bridge across Raymond, and a tunnel under it. Guests arriving by train would pass through the annex, to the second floor, and be trammed across the bridge. In the main residence they would simply retire to their suites. The luggage would follow via the tunnel.

Many of the servants and attendants of the guests were forced to find quartering in the adjacent buildings. In 1902 the Green had a wing built along Kansas (now Green Street) to the P. G. Wooster Block, home of Throop University, forerunner to Caltech.). This was all run as the Hotel Green.

In 1924 the Hotel converted to all residential apartments. The original building (annex) was razed to its first floor. All that is left of that original hotel is a portico on the corner of Raymond and Green. The building is now owned by Stats Floral Supply. In 1970 the government's HUD project acquired the 1902 wing and separated the buildings into the Green Hotel on Green and the Castle Green on Raymond.

In 1887, a Chicago land speculator by the name of Morgan built a three story block next to the site of the County Jail. In 1895, John Woodbury built a modest office building for himself which he shared with Jared S. Torrance. This building was replaced by the Marsh Block in 1902 which took up the whole corner lot of Raymond and Kansas south of the Morgan. In 1894 Van der Vort constructed the building that still bears his name at 32 S. Raymond. In 1889, Robert MacComber built the MacComber block on the northwest corner of Raymond and Kansas. In 1906 Braley built his bike manufacturing building which eventually became his Oldsmobile dealership.

In 1929 Colorado Street (now Colorado Boulevard) was widened on the north side and many of the elaborate Victorian faces of the buildings were lost to reconstruction and replaced with more contemporary and less costly frontages. An additional 14 feet in width was added to Colorado Street as a result. In 1929 Kansas Street was widened and renamed Green Street. Union and Holly Streets were part of a city gateway that were to lead toward City Hall (1933) from the statue and flag at Orange Grove and Colorado Blvd. The whole plan was scaled down, but the streets were put in.

Pasadena’s downtown declined between 1930 and 1980, but it has since been revived as “Old Pasadena,” one of Southern California’s most popular shopping and entertainment destinations. Dedicating parking meter revenue to finance public improvements in the area since 1993 has played a major part in this revival.

Old Town Pasadena today is mostly a business district with some mixed use. It now boasts a shopping mall, upscale restaurants, a movie theater, nightclubs, shops, posh outdoor cafés, pubs, and comedy clubs.

After touring around Old Town Pasadena, I had seen on Food Network about an old classic pharmacy in South Pasadena. I head straight down Fair Oaks Avenue to Mission Rd. to the Fair Oaks Pharmacy.

Originally named the South Pasadena Pharmacy when it opened its doors in 1915, this South Pasadena landmark was known as the Raymond Pharmacy throughout the 1920s and ‘30s and was a popular rest stop on the westernmost end of Route 66. Today’s Fair Oaks Pharmacy & Soda Fountain was restored in the early 1990s to its original turn-of-the-century splendor. Authentic tin ceilings and honeycomb tile floors, and a complete set of antique pharmacy fixtures and an original soda fountain all the way from Joplin, Missouri, to round out the store’s vintage interior décor. Coincidentally the heirloom fixtures were purchased from the Me Gee pharmacy located in Joplin Missouri on Route 66!