PASADENA CITY HALL
HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE                    

Pasadena City Hall is one of the finest examples of the California Mediterranean style. It is the dominant building in the Pasadena Civic Center, a complex of government, institutional and cultural buildings that epitomizes the City Beautiful movement.

Since its completion on December 27, 1927, Pasadena City Hall has remained one of the most distinctive public buildings in the United States and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

An official building of imposing beauty, massive yet graceful, and suited to a land of flowers and sunshine is what the Pasadena Board of Directors (called the City Council in modern times) had in mind when they undertook to build the present City Hall.

The way had been prepared in 1923, when the people of Pasadena passed a bond issue of $3.5 million to establish a civic center. The Chicago firm of Bennett, Parsons and Frost was commissioned to draw up a civic center plan. The planners established Garfield Avenue as an axis, on which City Hall was to be the central element, with the Pasadena Public Library to the north and the Pasadena Civic Auditorium to the south. Also included in the original design were the Pasadena Police Department, Pasadena Municipal Court, YMCA, YWCA, Southern California Gas Company and United States Post Office. Over the years the new police building and county court building have been added. The YMCA building is now Centennial Place, a single-room-occupancy apartment complex, and the Southern California Gas building is now the Permit Center. The YWCA building is unoccupied because of seismic and other issues.

The cost for building Pasadena City Hall was $1.3 million. For the final design, the San Francisco architectural firm of Bakewell and Brown turned to the style of 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, who had studied and admired the Roman architect Vitruvius, as did the California mission-building padres. Palladio represented the simple, serene, classical style of the early Renaissance, in contrast to the Gothic style of medieval times and the rococo style of the later Renaissance.

Three famous European domed structures show Palladio’s influence: the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, the Hotel des Invalides in Paris and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Without being a direct imitation, Pasadena City Hall is related to them all.

Bakewell and Brown had a Palladian purity of taste but approached the style freely when designing Pasadena City Hall, gracing the walls with a moderate amount of ornamentation in the form of lion heads and garlands – symbolizing strength and abundance – as well as scrolls bearing the official crown and key. The dome is solidly based and commanding yet graceful and airy in appearance. Bakewell and Brown thought in terms of sun-warmed buff against blue skies and greenery with an accent of red tiles and shady, cloistered walks, a garden and splashing fountain. They also planned for all the rooms that would be needed by a busy city administration many years to come.

Pasadena City Hall is a rectangular edifice outlining a spacious court. On the outside it measures 351 feet north and south and 242 feet east and west. The east side is a one-story arcade. The other three sides are three stories high with small towers at each corner and the main dome over the west entrance. The 235 rooms and passageways cover 170,000 square feet.

The massive circular tower structure rises perpendicularly for six stories. The fifth story is 41 feet high and pierced with four huge, round arches and four smaller ones. The next story, set back a little, is 30 feet high and is also pierced with arches. Above it rises the dome, 26 feet high and 54 feet across. On top of the dome is the lantern, a column-supported cupola 41 feet high, surmounted by an urn and ball. The highest point is 206 feet above the ground.

The stairways have treads of Alaskan marble, with wrought iron balustrades. Cast stone is used for the fountain and wall ornaments. The roof is red Cordova clay tile and the dome is covered with fish-scale tile, originally multicolored but now red. The lanterns of the stair towers and the big dome are sheathed in copper. The floor of the main lobby and corridors is Padre tile and the interior woodwork is of vertical-grained white oak.

The courtyard has a strong Spanish Colonial atmosphere. The focal point is the cast stone Baroque fountain. 22.5 feet tall with a basin 25 feet in diameter. Paths of crushed granite define the flower beds and cloistered arches paved with red Padre tile surround the courtyard. California live oak trees and large silk floss trees provide shade for the azaleas, hydrangeas, rhododendron and beds of annuals that are planted on a rotational basis.

Have you seen me? Three of my fellow historic, cast stone urns and I vanished several years ago. When City Hall was built in 1927, we surrounded the courtyard fountain. All four of us were about four feet high and sat on concrete pedestals about a foot high and two feet square – a little wider at the top. Here’s where the story gets intriguing: Sometime around the ‘50s or ’60s (no one’s quite sure when), we went missing. Historians doubt we were trashed; we may have been “borrowed” by an urn devotee or donated to an organization. We would love to be returned to our original home by the fountain – especially as the city gears up for the retrofit and top-to-bottom restoration of City Hall. Email aerdman@cityofpasadena.net if you know our whereabouts or call 744-7073 or 744-4000. You’ll urn our undying gratitude.

All photos circa 1928; courtesy of Pasadena Public Library.

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