Added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 25, 1983

Gartz Court occupies a surprisingly large lot in Pasadena, sandwiched in between the 210 freeway to the east, and a leafy district of historic homes to the west. If you were to hop over the back fence and keep walking, you’d soon tumble into the Arroyo Seco riverbed, just south of the Rose Bowl (visit #186). Don’t do that. Instead, stand on the concrete walkway leading into Gartz Court, and soak in the grandeur of this outstanding example of a bungalow court – a type of multi-family housing that flourished in Pasadena between 1910 and 1930. 

Back then, you couldn’t turn a corner in Pasadena without encountering a new bungalow court under construction. The city’s population grew by 150% during that time, from around 30,000 in 1910 to more than 76,000 in 1930, and the bungalow court would’ve been an attractive setup for all the new folks pouring in. They offer that sense of community and security that comes from living right across a walkway from a bunch of other families, but also some of the privacy of a single-family home, all at a much lower cost than hiring an architect to build you a new house.

Gartz’s arrangement of four detached units and a duplex, all surrounding a central courtyard, was a pretty typical layout for a bungalow court. And yet this property stands apart from the 100+ historic courts that remain in Pasadena due to its age, its architecture and the dramatic story of its preservation. Let’s unpack what makes Gartz Court so special. 

REASON ONE: IT’S OLD

Built in 1910, Gartz Court was one of the earliest bungalow courts built in Pasadena, and by extension, anywhere. Only St. Francis Court is older, and that one was chopped up and reconfigured at the corner of South Catalina Avenue and Cornell Road in Pasadena. Gartz remains the oldest Pasadena court in its original configuration.

The namesake for Gartz Court was its commissioner, Kate Crane Gartz. She was a wealthy socialite from Chicago, the heir to the Crane Plumbing fortune, and a philanthropist for progressive causes. Detractors called her a “parlor pinko” for consorting with leftist intellectuals and the liberal elite. Famous names like Upton Sinclair, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Aline Barnsdall and King Gillette are often mentioned as visitors to the salons that Gartz held at her Altadena estate, “The Cloister.” 

But Gartz didn’t just talk about progressive values. She was also a civic leader who co-founded the Pasadena Playhouse and the Southern California branch of the ACLU. She bailed Upton Sinclair out of jail when he was arrested in 1923 for reading the Constitution in public, and threw her money at building projects that embodied the values she believed in. You can imagine how someone with socialist sympathies might read the bungalow court as an experiment in communitarian living for the working class. We’ll just ignore the fact that one of Gartz Court’s earliest residents, Eugenia Jones Bacon, was a slave owner before the Civil War and published the novel Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South as a pro-slavery response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

REASON TWO: ITS ARCHITECTURE

The historic courts of Pasadena can vary widely in their quality of design and construction, especially as Pasadena surpassed “peak bungalow court” season in the 1920s. The earliest examples are all pretty great though, and tended to be the work of bold architects, commissioned by folks with resources and a speculator’s willingness to take risks (e.g. Bowen Court, visit #180). 

While the architect of Gartz Court is officially unknown, most scholars believe it was designed by Myron Hunt & Elmer Grey, one of the most prominent firms working in Los Angeles at the time. Either as a duo or individually, they were responsible for the Pasadena Central Library, Throop University (later CalTech), Occidental College, the Huntington mansion (which became the Huntington Art Gallery) and the Mt. Wilson Observatory. In the ‘20s, Hunt would design the Rose Bowl and the Ambassador Hotel. 

One high-profile dissent comes from architectural historian Robert Winter, who attributes Gartz Court to Sylvanus Marston, designer of the earlier St. Francis Court. Though a current Gartz resident told me an anecdote about a visitor who had lived in a Myron Hunt house for years, and immediately clocked Gartz as the work of Hunt, based on the classical columns that often show up in his entryways.

Whoever designed Gartz Court, they did a masterful job of interweaving different aesthetics into a coherent whole. On the outside of each unit, you’ll see the wide eaves, exposed beams of douglas fir, broad porches and wooden shingle skirts so common in the prevailing craftsman movement. The superb arroyo rock masonry of the foundations and chimneys are signature craftsman moves, too. But then the cream-colored walls are criss-crossed by decorative half-timbering, a callback to English Tudor buildings from the 1500s.

The court is laid out as three sets of mirror-image units facing each other, the two largest nearest the entrance, then the two middle-sized ones, and then a duplex at the rear. While the floor plans differ depending on the size of the unit, each one features the same high level of care and craftsmanship on the interior. There are original hardwood floors and handsome brick fireplaces, built-in cabinetry and natural light streaming in through plentiful windows. Out the back of each unit is an outdoor garden area. 

REASON 3: ITS PRESERVATION HISTORY

Gartz Court has always been my most favorite historic preservation project.

Claire Bogaard, former Executive Director of Pasadena Heritage

Since 1984, Gartz Court has sat on this 60,000 square foot lot on Pasadena Avenue. But for the first 74 years of its existence, Gartz sat about two miles east, near the corner of North Madison Avenue and Corson Street. For decades it was surrounded by other houses from the same time period. Much of that was gone by the early ‘80s, replaced by mid-century office buildings and apartment complexes, and Gartz Court itself was sandwiched between two parking lots. Once the 210 Freeway was completed in 1976, cars buzzed by day and night, less than a block away.

At the bottom of the block was the headquarters of Montgomery Engineering, a successful consulting and construction firm that specialized in large-scale water projects. Montgomery bought Gartz Court in 1982, evicted the tenants, and announced plans to demolish the bungalows in order to expand their offices. 

The area was zoned for residential use, which meant that Montgomery had to apply for a variance with the City of Pasadena to get their office building approved. That’s when Pasadena’s Board of Directors got involved. After intensive conversations between the City, Montgomery Engineering and the fledgling preservation organization Pasadena Heritage, a plan was hatched to relocate Gartz Court in exchange for the variance that Montgomery sought. 

Claire Bogaard, former Executive Director of Pasadena Heritage, remembers it well. “The Gartz Court relocation was a joint-venture project – on behalf of the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission and Pasadena Heritage,” Bogaard explained via email. “[Future LA Conservancy President and CEO] Linda Dishman, who was about 25 years old and who worked in the Planning Dept., was the City’s point-person. The Pasadena Planning Director liked the relocation project and told the two of us to do the project and if we needed any help…to be in touch. So – the two of us went to work…every day was a new learning experience.”

A golden opportunity came up in early June of 1983, when the CA State Office of Historic Preservation announced a matching grant program available for historic properties through a federal jobs bill. The only problem was that the application deadline was just six weeks away, and they hadn’t finalized where the court would be moved, or who would pay for whatever the feds didn’t cover. Complicating matters further, eligible properties had to be on the National Register of Historic Places, and Montgomery Engineering had objected to Gartz’s listing the previous year – presumably to remove one obstacle to demolition.

Everything came together within three weeks. Pasadena offered up a city-owned site at 745 N. Pasadena Avenue that was being used as a community garden, Montgomery contributed $30,000 for the relocation, and Pasadena Heritage pitched in another $20k from its revolving Preservation Fund. Montgomery withdrew its objection to the National Register listing on July 11, and the grant application was filed on deadline day, July 15, 1983. The project didn’t make it to the final round of grant review, but luckily they were able to find alternative funding sources.

Late in the evening on May 30, 1984, the first two of the Gartz Court units were moved via truck to their new home, with the others following the next night. “Linda and I asked the ‘house movers’ if we could ride on the trucks with one of the bungalows,” recalled Bogaard. “‘Of course,’ the truck drivers said – and we thought that was really fun! (Can’t imagine a house moving company would allow that today!)”

Over the next six months, Gartz Court was treated to a meticulous restoration under the care of Stefanos Polyzoides, the man who literally wrote the book on courtyard housing in LA. The interiors were replastered and painted. Chimneys and fireplaces were rebuilt. New roofs were added and wood floors were refinished. Electrical and plumbing was brought up to code, and new vinyl floors were added in the kitchens and bathrooms. The oval green space in the central courtyard was planted with roses, just like in the original location. 

Polyzoides and his partner Peter de Bretteville also designed two-car garages for each unit – a necessity in the 1980s, not so much in 1910. The garages are clad in the same shingles and stucco of the main units, but the patterns were reversed (stucco on the bottom, shingles higher up) to visually differentiate the historic structures from the newer ones. “We did not know what a talented, skilled and knowledgeable architect we were hiring,” Bogaard said. “We learned so much from Stefanos and to this day – Stefanos remains a dear friend of Pasadena Heritage.”

The restoration itself was only half the battle. “When the bungalows arrived on trucks in the middle of the night, the neighbors were not happy and doubted that the bungalows would truly be ‘restored’ and sold,” recalls Bogaard. “[We] kept the neighbors informed about the restoration plans. Gradually, [they] realized that we were doing a quality historic preservation project and the neighbors became enthusiastic supporters.”

The units at the relocated Gartz Court were put up for sale through a lottery in the summer of 1984. By the end of the year all but one had a new owner, with the sixth moving in in 1985. That same year, Gartz Court received an award from the LA Conservancy, and another for Outstanding Merit in the California Preservation Foundation Awards.

I toured four of the units at Gartz Court, enough to get a sense of how these spaces are transformed by each owner to fit their predilections. An owner of a medium unit, a real estate agent and wardrobe stylist, went the minimalist route and populated her living room with chic vintage furniture and decorations. Another resident filled his built-ins with books and framed family photos in the spacious living room of a large unit. One of the duplex units is adorned with fanciful sculptures of woodland creatures, crafted by the owner out of branches and twigs. The man who owns the adjoining unit stripped back more than a century of paint from the door and window frames, exposing the naturally gorgeous wood grain underneath.

Several of the current residents at Gartz Court have lived there for many years, including one original owner. He had first considered a small duplex units, but nabbed a medium-sized one after it fell out of escrow in 1985. He describes Gartz Court as “a little neighborhood in itself.” 

For Claire Bogaard, Gartz was an important project, both personally and professionally. “In the early 1980s, Pasadena Heritage was still a ‘new’ organization but we were willing to take on the project because we recognized the importance of the bungalow court and we fully supported selling the completed and restored units in affordable ranges,” she told me. “Now, almost 40 years later, I drive by Gartz Court and smile. Our historic Gartz Court has been so well maintained by its owners and it provides such great housing!”

PS: My research uncovered a lovely “full circle” situation in the story of Gartz Court. Early on it was known as Gloria Court, presumably named after Kate Crane Gartz’s daughter Gloria, who would’ve been about three years old when the court was built. In 1941, Gloria bought the historic Edmund Blinn House, and sold it in 1945 to the Women’s City Club. Fast forward to 2021, and the Blinn House transferred ownership again, this time to Pasadena Heritage – the very organization that helped to save Gartz Court in the early 1980s. The Blinn House has been home base for Pasadena Heritage ever since. 

Thank you to the residents of Gartz Court for welcoming me into their homes and sharing their stories; to Claire Bogaard for her reflections; and to Kristen Norton & Andrew Salimian of Pasadena Heritage for introducing me to all the above, and supplying me with primo historic pics and research materials.

Sources & Recommended Reading 

+ “A Moving Experience” (Pasadena Heritage newsletter, Vol. 8 No. 1, Spring 1984)

+ “Cities and Towns of Los Angeles County: Woman Cousin Pays Tribute” (Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1912 – via ProQuest)

+ “Gartz Court – New Project for Preservation Fund” (Pasadena Heritage newsletter, Vol. 7 No. 2-3, Summer/Fall 1983)

+ “Gartz Court Complete” (Pasadena Heritage newsletter, Vol. 8 No. 3-4, Fall/Winter 1984)

+ Gartz Court NRHP nomination form

+ “Gloria Crane Gartz” (BlinnHouseFoundation.org)

+ Holloway, Will: “A Sense of Place” (Period Homes, Vol. 7, No. 6, November 2006 – PDF download via USmodernist.org)

+ Luke, John with Robert Winter and Kevin Jon Henry: “Pasadena’s Gartz Court at 100: Quite Lovely In Its Place” (American Bungalow, vol. 67, fall 2010)

+ Morrison, Patt: “San Pedro. Exterior. Dusk. Upton Sinclair arrested for reading the 1st Amendment” (Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2023)

+ Sicha, Richard J., Pasadena Heritage: Bungalow Courts of Pasadena NRHP nomination form

+ “Six Preservation Winners Named : L. A. Conservancy Recognizes Work on Historic Buildings” (Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1985)

+ Winter, Robert: “The Gartz Court: Home Again” (Arts + Architecture, Vol. 4 No. 2, July 1985 – PDF download via USModernist.org)

+ Zack, Michelle: “Kate Crane Gartz – 1865-1949 – Altadena’s Parlor Provocateur Was More Than That” (AltadenaHeritage.org)