After early morning church, Roxanne, Jeanette and I went to Pasadena for the annual Pasadena Showcase Home Tour benefiting the Los Angeles Philharmonic music education programs. No cameras were allowed on the grounds, so these pictures are my favorite rooms from the catalogue. The house is 19,000 square feet: seven living rooms, eleven bedrooms, and about half the space servants quarters. At one time the childless couple who built the home had 34 servants (17 daily, and 17 live-in). And I can't manage to have one measly little scrawny servant! NOT FAIR!
The house is three stories and a basement. This picture shows about half of the front.
The front doors
The solarium with a beautiful harpsichord.
The designer of this room played and sang Baroque music for us.
I could just imagine having a recital in this room. It was quite long.
This very large breakfast room was one of my favorite rooms.
Part of it (looking straight on) was done as an art/craft area.
Behind the camera view is a sitting area.
The breakfast table was really a large dining table.
Rather opulent for my bowl of cereal or Slim-Fast Diet drink,
but a favorite, nevertheless.
This very large drawing room was more like a library.
The couple who built the house made their fortune in tobacco.
So they lived in luxury while making other people physically ill.
That is so sad. The last owner donated the house to the Red Cross in the 1960s.
So it will return to office space once the tour is over,
but with beautifully papered and paneled walls,
beautifully painted and decoratively plastered ceilings,
and wonderfully renewed wood and marble floors.
