This 1882 mansion was the home of the Woodbury family, founders of Altadena, and later expanded by a prominent pump organ vendor

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1993

Madison Ave. north of Mariposa St. in Altadena doesn’t look so exceptional today. Maybe the more architecturally observant among us would ponder the placement of a stately, two-story colonial revival-style home on a cul-de-sac surrounded by nondescript ranch houses. But let’s take a reverse time lapse trip 140 years into the past. As we go back in time, all those ranch homes disappear. The Bunny Museum is gone. The trees turn back into saplings. The Altadena sheriff’s station and fire station vanish from around the corner, as do the mansions on Mariposa. The streets lose their paving, then turn back into acres of citrus groves, vineyards and poppy fields. There’s only one building standing, that colonial revival home. That’s the Woodbury-Story House, Altadena’s oldest remaining house – and possibly its first.

“Woodbury” was Frederick Woodbury, considered to be the founder of Altadena along with his brother John. They came from a prosperous family of farmers and bankers in Marshalltown, Iowa. In addition to working his family’s land, Frederick was a Union captain under Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. 

Some old Iowa friends had settled near Pasadena, and convinced him there was farming potential in the area. So in the early 1880s, the Woodburys moved west; Frederick and John purchased a 937 acre subdivision of the old Rancho San Pasqual, including the undeveloped foothills just above Pasadena. John Woodbury joined him a few years later, and in 1887, the pair incorporated a company to subdivide the land and sell to eager new landowners. For themselves, they kept a nine-acre plot, anchored by the house, and surrounded by orchards and vineyards. They had a nursery where John planted the 135 deodar cedars that would eventually become Christmas Tree Lane (visit # 27). 

The two-story, Italianate Woodbury-Story House was built around 1882. While the architect is unknown, the NRHP application surmises it might have been Hamilton Ridgway, the first architect with an office in Pasadena, and the designer of Woodbury’s second home in Pasadena. In 1895, the home was bought by a well-to-do music business family from Chicago, Hampton and Adella Story. Hampton made his money selling organs and pianos for the Estey company; and in fact had recently moved from San Diego, where he helped to fund another architectural landmark, the Hotel del Coronado. The Storys hired Frederick Roehrig, designer of both the Andrew McNally mansion and the famous Hotel Green (see visit #54), to augment the house with a music room that could house his pipe organ. Naturally!

In the years since the Woodbury-Story house has undergone many owners and some curious uses. According to the NRHP application, in the ‘30s-’40s it was a tea room and restaurant called the Royal Trees Tavern; in the late ‘40s it housed the LA County Sheriff office and a court of the law. Over the years it was parceled off, and currently sits on a lot of under one acre. Its present day owner rents it out for film shoots and photo sessions. If you’re a fan of American Horror Story, V/H/S or Ghost Adventures, you’ve likely spied some of the interior during your watching. In the “Gone Gone Gone” episode in season 5 of True Blood, the house was used to stage the mass slaughter of an entire fraternity chapter by two vampires.

It’s also prominently used in this AWOLNATION video:

The Woodburys and their business partners envisioned a community for the wealthy. Altadena did attract a number of monied families in the next decade: Mariposa St., right around the corner from their estate, developed into a “Publishers Row” (see Andrew McNally House, visit #29, the Zane Grey Estate, visit #28, and Scripps Hall). There was also a proposed Altadena Hotel (never built), and the Los Angeles Terminal Railway made it to Altadena in 1888. The SoCal land boom went belly up around the same time, so Altadena grew more slowly than the Woodburys hoped. 140 years later, it’s a culturally and socioeconomically diverse borough. Altadena has expanded and changed a lot, and yet still has the feel of a small town. And the Woodbury-Story house has borne witness to its entire history.

Recommended Reading

+Woodbury-Story House @ NRHP website

+A Short History of Altadena (AltadenaHeritage.org)

+Altadena California: An Abbreviated History for the Internet (Altadena Town Council website)

+Woodbury House, Storied Altadena Landmark, Reportedly Wins Reprieve from May 14 Foreclosure Auction (Altadena Now)