Old Town Pasadena

Old Town Pasadena

Old Pasadena is the original commercial center of Pasadena, a city in California, United States that arose from one of the most prosperous areas of the state, and had a latter day revitalization after a period of decay. Old Pasadena is often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or just Old Town.

Old Pasadena began as the center of an enlightened "Athens of the West" that gave rise to Caltech, JPL, as well as Beckman Instruments, Aerojet and numerous other industrial giants. The area also 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 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 1940s, the area was 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 1980s, urban renewal was in full swing with the trendy set.

Old Pasadena is now a designated historic district of the Pasadena Charter defined by its boundaries 1) to the North, Holly Street from Fair Oaks Avenue to Arroyo Parkway; 2) on the East, Arroyo Parkway south to Green Street, jogging one half block west to the old Santa Fe RR right-of-way and continuing 3) South to encompass the Old Train Station and Central Park, then north on Fair Oaks to De Lacey Street, then west to Pasadena Blvd.; 4) on the West by Pasadena Blvd. north to Union Street, back to Fair Oaks Boulevard. and north to Holly Street.

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. By this charter, a strictly controlled redevelopment was able to be established with federal tax incentives to qualifying investors. Under strict guidelines, buildings were able to be stripped of old paint, revealing some of the finer—as well as some of the roughest—of early brickwork fasciae. All renovations or remodeling came under the scrutiny of a city commission which approved materials, colors and styles, most of which were to reflect the period of 1925 to 1940, the time after which these buildings had lost their appeal.

The Old Pasadena Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.