Added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 9, 2011

This charmer of a Victorian cottage gives us a good sense of how the middle and upper-middle class residential enclaves of Pasadena were shaping up at the end of the 19th century. Un-rich folks couldn’t afford the mega-mansions of Millionaires Row. In the less wealthy neighborhoods, you’d find a lot of modest single-family homes like this one. They were generally designed by the contractor who built them, rather than an architect, and came in a variety of “vernacular” styles imported from elsewhere. Often you’d find a simple design dolled up with some decorative details from the Queen Anne or Eastlake playbooks.

The building typologists call the Friend Lacey House a “Vernacular Hipped Cottage with Queen Anne detailing.” In other words it’s relatively small at 1,600 square feet, mostly one story, it’s dominated by a roof that slopes downwards to the edges (with a dormer and front gable interrupting the slope action), and it has just enough decorative doodads on the facade to catch the eye. Those turned posts holding up the eaves, and the diamond and fishscale-pattern shingles? They’re there for the flair, and so much fun even in the current muted color scheme. I’d wager they were there when this home was first built. 

This house was built for Friend Engels Lacey, a retired attorney with a history of working out thorny land claims connected to the old Spanish and Mexican ranchos. Lacey was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa and moved to Pasadena from Santa Barbara with his mom Nancy and dad Robert in the early 1880s. Lacey’s family bought a parcel from a major landowner named Alexander Grogan, and ended up on a 10-acre orange grove centered around Madison Avenue and Villa Street, not far from where this house would later be built. 

The Laceys arrived in the early days of Pasadena, less than a decade after the city was founded, and just before it was incorporated in 1886. It was a time of huge growth for Pasadena. The city’s population mushroomed from fewer than 400 souls in 1880 to nearly 5,000 in 1890, thanks in large part to the extension of rail service from LA. As people poured in, landowners realized they had more to gain from selling their acreage than growing oranges on it. Many of Pasadena’s large citrus groves transformed into residential subdivisions.

If all the notices of real estate transfers in the local papers that involved the Lacey family are any indication, they made a sizable impact on their growing community by subdividing their land and contributing to the layout of the resulting land tracts. You can still drive down De Lacey Avenue in Pasadena, named after the family’s old surname, and Santa Barbara Street, which Robert Delacey named after their former home. 

Friend Lacey was a mover and shaker himself. He earned his Master of Philosophy degree from USC in 1884, as part of the school’s very first graduating class. In 1888 he was admitted to the bar, then became a notary public and joined multiple law practices in the 1890s, including a partnership with the venerable judge Stephen C. Hubbell. The Los Angeles Times described Friend in 1893 as “one of Pasadena’s promising lawyers.” He brought his legal skills back home, as the secretary of the Northeast Improvement Association. In 1896 Friend represented several of his Villa Street neighbors in petitioning the Pasadena City Council to nullify an agreement with a contractor that they accused of doing shoddy work improving the street. A few years later, Friend presented another petition to widen Illinois Street (later renamed East Orange Grove Avenue). 

Back to the house: Notices in the papers show that Friend’s parents transferred a tract in Rancho San Pascual (the old Mexican land grant that included present-day Pasadena) to him in 1884. Then the following year, Friend transferred a lot on the corner of Moline (now El Molino) and Villa to his dad. That corner is where the house we care about here is still located.

The house’s National Register application indicates that both the Friend Lacey House at 683 East Villa (now 679) and the one just west of it at 675 East Villa (now 669) were built by Friend’s dad. Makes sense – Robert Lacey was identified as a plasterer and brick mason in census records. I might question whether he could have actually built both of them though, given that he passed away in August of 1892, and the Friend Lacey House was “just erected” in April of 1893, per an LA Times notice.

But the two houses do bear the mark of the same designer. They’ve got the same mix of horizontal siding, diamond and fishscale shingles; the same steep, hipped roofline with a projecting gable; the same turned-wood posts holding up the porch; the same tall double-hung windows on the front and sides, plus a front door with a rectangular transom window above. Tough to say how similar they were on the inside, as I’ve located exactly 0 interior photos of the Friend Lacey House. But the innards of 669 (née 675) as pictured in 2018 still retain some refined Victorian details, so I sure hope they were similar.

Early Sanborn maps show a detached structure straddling the property line between the two houses, which may have been a shared carriage house or barn. It’s since been expanded, and isn’t part of the National Register listing.

Over the first couple decades of the Friend Lacey House, the various members of the Lacey family seem to have done a do-si-do between the two houses. Friend and his wife Carrie moved into 683 soon after the house was built in 1893. But the 1900 census finds them living with their son, Courtney at the other house owned by the Lacey family next door, at 675 East Villa Street. Carrie’s obituary from 1913 reported that she was still living at 675 when she died. 

The 1900 census also shows Friend’s mother Nancy living at 683, along with Friend’s sister Theodene. When Nancy passed away in 1920 at the ripe old age of 89, her obituary mentioned she was still a resident of the Friend Lacey House at 683 East Villa. And when Theodene died 15 years later, per the Pasadena Star-News, she too was still living at 683 East Villa at the time. 

Did Friend and Carrie move next door from their home at 683 so that mamma Nancy and sister Theo could have their own space? It seems plausible, but why didn’t Nancy and Theo just move into 675 East Villa instead? Perhaps the slightly larger footprint of 675 was a more comfortable fit for a family of three? Mysteries abound here. 

We do know that Friend was back to living at 683 as of the 1940 census, and that same year, his name showed up on a plumbing permit as the owner of the property. Friend’s own obituary in 1942 placed him at 683, too, where he and his wife Carrie first moved in nearly 50 years prior. 

The Friend Lacey House changed hands a few times after its original owner’s death. It would appear that subsequent owners rented out separate rooms of the house, because starting in 1948, we start seeing ads to rent the front room. Then in 1954-55, there are two separate birth announcements from two separate families at the same address. Permits and occupancy certificates as late as the ‘90s indicate that the house was being used as a multi-family dwelling.

As far as I can tell the Friend Lacey House of today is back to its original use as a single-family home. The landscaping is luscious, and the home’s few visible alterations – a stylish picket fence, a chimney – are all of a piece with the home’s late 19th century vibe. Even that rooster cutout in the gable window feels like it belongs. 

Two final curious tidbits to add to the lore of the Friend Lacy House: 

• In 1904, the court appointed Friend Lacey as the guardian of Miss Enid Gault, a teenager who had run away from home after accusing her mother of being a kleptomaniac. Enid stayed with the Laceys while she sorted stuff out. Years later, she would earn local acclaim for her remarkable whistling abilities. The Pasadena Star wrote that “Her bird imitations were also excellent.”
• In 1931, someone at 683 East Villa Street placed a lost and found ad in the Pasadena Star-News about a Mexican red-headed parrot named Miguel. No word on whether he was ever found. 

Resources & Recommended Reading

+ “669 East Villa Street” (Compass.com)

+ “683 E. Villa” (AD – Pasadena Independent, September 5, 1954 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Births” (Pasadena Independent, April 12, 1954 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Births” (Pasadena Independent, December 19, 1955 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “City Corrects Mistakes on Street Names” (Pasadena Post, June 3, 1942 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Clune’s Bill Is Remarkably Fine” (Pasadena Star, May 2, 1911 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Court Notes.” (Los Angeles Tribute, February 5, 1888 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Enid’s Choice Confirmed.” (Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1904 – via ProQuest)

+ “Friend Engels Lacey” (FamilySearch.org)

+ “General Population by City, Los Angeles County.” Los Angeles Almanac. © 1998-2026 Given Place Media, publishing as Los Angeles Almanac. Accessed February 26, 2026.

+ Grimes, Teresa with Laura Vanaskie, Galvin Preservation Associates: “Late 19th and Early 20th Century Development and Architecture in Pasadena” (PDF download)

+ “History Told by Star Files” (Pasadena Star, February 13, 1912 – via Newspapers.com)

+ HRG for the City of Pasadena: “Historic Context Statement: Residential Development (1873-1979)” (PDF – cityofpasadena.net)

+ Johnson, Kevin: Friend Lacey House’s NRHP nomination form 

+ “LACEY – Miss Theo V.” (Pasadena Star-News, September 20, 1935 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Licensed to Wed.” (Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1893 – via ProQuest)

+ “Lost and Found” (Pasadena Star-News, January 23, 1931 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Lovely Girl Files Charge.” (Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1904 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Nancy E. Lacey” (Pasadena Post, March 8, 1920 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Notice of Sale of Real Estate Under Execution.” (Los Angeles Evening Express, September 8, 1896)

+ “Obituary: LACEY, Carrie B.” (Pasadena Star-News, June 2, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Pasadena building permits (cityofpasadena.net)

+ Pasadena City Directory (1919, via Internet Archive)

+ “Pasadena Realty Is on the Boom.” (Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1902 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Property Transfers.” (Los Angeles Herald, May 7, 1884 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Real Estate Transfers.” (Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1885 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Rev. Dr. Conger was called in Sunday noon…” (Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1893 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Robert W. Lacey died…” (Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Service Held for Pioneer Resident” (Pasadena Star-News, March 30, 1942 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Street Matters” (Los Angeles Herald, July 30, 1897 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Study of Late 19th and Early 20th Century Residential Buildings” (cityofpasadena.net)

+ US Census, Pasadena (1900, via FamilySearch.org)

+ US Census, Pasadena (1940, via FamilySearch.org)

+ US Census, Santa Barbara (1880, via FamilySearch.org)

+ USC Yearbook, 1886/1887 (via HathiTrust)