Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1977

There are few LA drives I love more than rolling down Prospect Boulevard in Pasadena at a 3 mph crawl, and passing through the colonnade of century-old camphor trees that line the street, all the way to its end. As you turn from Orange Grove onto Prospect, a pair of river rock and clinker brick gateposts announce your entrance to the Prospect Historic District, like two ancient cairns. They were designed by brothers Charles & Henry Greene, the leading craftsman architects in Southern California in the early 20th century. That same year, Greene & Greene also designed a compact bungalow just 1000 feet down the road: the Louise C. Bentz House. 

This two-story home is quintessential Greene & Greene, which is to say, it looks like an idealized log cabin handmade by the craftiest elves in the forest. The siding made of dark redwood shakes, the low-pitched roof with wide eaves, the exposed rafters and beams, the wide bands of casement windows (in this case, they wrap all the way around the southwest corner of the bottom floor), the custom-made doors, even the ubiquitous hanging lantern at the entrance – all of these are patented Greene & Greene moves. Even if you don’t know their work, you can still admire how well integrated all the pieces and colors are, how perfectly proportioned the building is, how it feels solid and rooted despite its height. 

The Bentz House was built during a prolific period of the Greenes’ career. In the previous few years, they had honed in on their distinctive design M.O. with superb smaller homes like the Lucretia Garfield House and the Jennie A. Reeve House. They were still a couple years away from their “Ultimate Bungalows” for the wealthy, like the Gamble House and the Blacker House. But here at the Bentz, you can see the craft that the Greenes applied even on more modest homes for upper middle class clients, and the care they took in matching their style to the clients’ needs. As but one example, the wood trim on the inside is all douglas fir, an inexpensive wood at the time. According to photographer and Greene & Greene expert William R. Current, flat-cut douglas fir has a grain pattern similar to that of the popular Japanese tree sugi, which would have set off the client’s collection of Asian art and artifacts. 

+View Greene & Greene’s blueprints for the Bentz House (Greene & Greene Architectural Records & Paper Collection/Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library @ Columbia University)

So about that client: the Bentz House was commissioned by John C. Bentz, a Pasadena businessman who trafficked in Chinese and Japanese imports (he must have been friends – or frienemies? – of Grace Nicholson, the art collector/dealer who founded the Pacific Asia Museum). Bentz had become close friends with the Greenes after they designed a storefront in Pasadena to showcase his wares; John Bentz’s brother Nathan was a later Greene & Greene client, too. According to the Greene & Greene archives at Columbia University, the client’s name on the blueprints was at some point changed from John C. Bentz to Louise C. Bentz – I believe she was his wife.

John Bentz also invested in real estate, and in 1904, he joined with two other local businessmen to purchase the old 32-acre Cooly Tract, just east of the Arroyo Seco. In 1906, the acreage was officially recorded as the new Prospect Park Tract, and subdivided into 64 lots. That’s when the camphors were planted.

The Bentz House was the very first house built in the Prospect Park Tract, a significant enough historical fact on its own, but also important because of the standard in quality that it set for the rest of the tract. In the 20 or so years after the Bentz was built, lovely new homes sprouted up in a variety of styles by prominent architects like Reginald Johnson, Frederick Roehrig, Marston, Van Pelt & Maybury, G. Lawrence Stimson, Sylvanus Marston, Wallace Neff, Myron Hunt and the Heineman Brothers. And also some guy named Frank Lloyd Wright, whose vitally important Millard House was built just across Prospect Crescent from the Bentz House in 1923.

Even beyond the immediate area, the Bentz House made an impact. A New York Times article claims that the Hawks family asked Greene & Greene to duplicate their design for the Bentz at 408 Arroyo Terrace, just a half a mile away, after rejecting a more costly design. 

As often happened with Greene & Greene homes, the owners brought the Greenes back a few years later to expand the home. In 1910 they added a sleeping porch, another bathroom and a dressing room above the kitchen, where previously there was just a flat deck. They also appended a maid’s bedroom, back porch and the garage that you can still see on Prospect Crescent. Thanks to the caring restoration and upkeep of a variety of owners over the last 60-odd years, the Bentz House remains an eminent presence on one of the most beautiful residential stretches in all of LA County. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Louise C. Bentz House’s NRHP nomination form 

+ Chawkins, Steve: “Randell Makinson dies at 81; Greene & Greene preservation advocate” (Los Angeles Times, 2013)

+ Gebhard, David and Robert Winter: Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide (Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1994)

+ Giovannini, Joseph: “A Trove of Greene and Greene Houses” (New York Times, 1993)

+ Prospect Historic District’s NRHP nomination form