Roughly bounded by Pasadena, Fair Oaks, Raymond Aves., Arroyo Pkwy., Del Mar Blvd., and Corson St., Pasadena, California. County/parish: Los Angeles.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places September 15, 1983. NRIS 83001200.
152 contributing buildings. 1 contributing site. 1 contributing structure.
Old Pasadena, often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or simply Old Town, is the original commercial center of Pasadena, a city in California, United States, and had a latter-day revitalization after a period of decay.
Old Pasadena began as the center of a research hub where science and research institutions such as Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and companies such as Beckman Instruments and Aerojet, were founded. The large concentration of such companies in the area gave it the nickname "Athens of the West".
The area was also an artistic center, the home to Andy Warhol's West Coast museum debut and the first Marcel Duchamp retrospective, both at the Pasadena Art Museum (one of the earliest modern art museums in the country, now the Norton Simon Museum). Before that, Pasadena was a center of suffragist and pacifist movements and other liberal causes. By the late 1940s, the downtown area was blighted by flophouses, dive bars and pawn shops. It later became a hippie destination, with head shops, adult bookstores and massage parlors. By the late 1980s, Old Pasadena was undergoing a period of urban renewal and regeneration.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123859363