#103: Oaklawn Bridge & Waiting Station (Greene & Greene - South Pasadena)

My daughter the unicorn waits evocatively with a plastic bag

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1973

What we have here is a unique entry into the canon of architect brothers Charles & Henry Greene. It’s a bridge! Plus an adorable little waiting station just south of it, and a mysterious obelisk attached to its north wall.

“But wait, Greene & Greene designed a bridge?” you say, incredulously. “You mean the same guys that did the Gamble, the Blacker (see visit #44) and the Thorsen House? I thought they mostly did those ‘ultimate bungalows’ with shingles and overhanging eaves and cool furniture and stuff.” Yes my friend, the same two guys.

The waiting station shares some of the hallmarks of Greene & Greene’s work. The river stones sourced from the Arroyo Seco, mingling with thin layers of brick; the exposed redwood roof beams, extending beyond the eaves. It was designed as a stylish spot for passengers to wait for Pacific Electric’s big red cars, rumbling south on Fair Oaks.

The bridge, on the other hand, is a real outlier on Greene & Greene’s CV, offering another facet of their bold design sense that we don’t get from their famous houses. It’s an uncommonly graceful bridge, striking in its simplicity; its smooth curve and mostly unadorned surface give it the look of a paleolithic drawing of a brontosaurus. There’s none of the Beaux Arts intricacy of the Colorado Street Bridge and La Loma Bridge, just five minutes away.

The pylon attached to the Fair Oaks end of the north wall is a big question mark. What’s with those geometric concrete shapes, jutting out from the top? Perhaps it was intended to look like the leg from a Greene & Greene chair? Is it appropriate to worship like some ancient monolith? I’d say absolutely.

“On every side the verdant foliage of orange, eucalyptus, pepper and other odoriferous trees, burdens the balmy air with a perfume of which the city dweller knows little. What could be more desirable to the gentleman of taste, who has the welfare of his family most at heart, than to own a cheerful home surrounded with flowers and orange trees, among refined neighborhoods in this private park. Away from the evil influences of the crowded city, his children have here plenty of room to romp and play in the pure air and sunshine of the country, with all the best advantages of schools and churches.”
-G. LAWRENCE STIMSON, Oaklawn developer, from a 1907 sales brochure (”Oaklawn: A Suburb de Luxe”)

In 1905, Greene & Greene were hired by the South Pasadena Realty and Improvement Company to design a bridge that would take pedestrians and horse-drawn buggies from Fair Oaks Avenue up to the new Oaklawn Place subdivision of 24 houses. The bridge was practical, but mostly intended as a commercial tool for selling real estate to potential buyers who might be attracted to its modernness.

At the time, much of South Pasadena was still undeveloped. The Oaklawn of today is chock-a-block with impressive mansions and shaded by a canopy of century-old trees. Back when Oaklawn Bridge was built, the area was largely empty. Pictures of the bridge from 1906 show open land dotted with a few sparse trees in the background, and virtually no buildings with the exception of the Raymond Hotel in the distance.

Those old pictures also show the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which passed beneath the bridge on its way south. Not long after the bridge opened, some stress cracks developed, and so did some negative press. The railway insisted on adding a fifth shoring pillar to support the bridge’s main span; you gotta imagine the developers wanted to protect their investments, too. So while the addition was very much opposed by the Greenes, on aesthetic and engineering grounds, the railway got its way, and a different team designed and built a fifth pillar.

At various points in its history, the Oaklawn Bridge’s walls have been covered with ivy, hanging over the sides. The pictures of the dangling thicket of vines are impressive. But I prefer the bridge in its current bare state, where you can plainly see the dramatic structure of the thing, and peer through the giant holes dug through each pillar. You get a real sense of the subtlety of its design and construction, how builder Carl Leonardt sculpted reinforced concrete – still a very new building material in Southern California – into the bridge’s gentle, dramatic curves.

The Oaklawn Bridge was closed to auto traffic in 1973, after years of earthquake damage made it unsafe for vehicles. Now it’s for walkers only, and it’s a great place to watch the Gold Line clanging down the tracks underneath. During a 2002 restoration by the City of South Pasadena, structural engineers determined that the extra pillar had never actually supported the bridge as intended. It would appear that it’s no longer there.

This bridge is weather-beaten and discolored in spots, from years of train smoke and concrete patching and graffiti coverups. And it’s still a sight to behold. A footnote in the history of Greene & Greene’s work, perhaps, but what a footnote!

PS: If ever you visit the Oaklawn Bridge & Waiting Station, make your way west over the bridge and continue on to Buena Vista Street. You’ll be rewarded with two Greene & Greenes, right next door to each other: the Howard Longley House (see Etan Does LA visit #117), one of their earliest extant residential works, and the Lucretia Garfield House (Etan Does LA visit #93).

PPS: Here are photos of two new friends we met underneath the Oaklawn Bridge. My daughter named them Turtle Oh-No and Turkey Nothing.