A pristine Greene & Greene home in South Pasadena, built in 1904 for the widow of assassinated US President James Garfield. A former first lady lived and died here; Madonna’s sister lived here for a decade; and three Grammy-winning albums were recorded in the basement.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973

April 19 is the birthday of Lucretia Garfield. As a former first lady of the United States, she was arguably the most recognizable patron of the revered architecture firm of Greene & Greene – the brothers responsible for the Gamble House, the Blacker House (see visit #44), the Thorsen House and so many more, mostly in Pasadena.

Before we talk about the house itself, a little about its first owner. Lucretia Garfield was the widow of US President James Garfield, who was shot on July 2, 1881 and died of his wounds 79 days later. Lucretia was by all accounts an amazing human being, an intellectual and independent woman, proto-feminist, the mother of seven children and a devoted partner to her husband. She earned the public’s admiration for her resilience and faith following the assassination attempt, and her commitment to preserving his legacy once he passed. 

After her husband died, Lucretia retreated to her family home in Mentor, Ohio, and set to work organizing James Garfield’s archives. She established a Memorial Library wing of the home to house her husband’s papers, effectively creating the first US presidential library (you can visit it). But she would head west most winters to South Pasadena, and at the age of 72, she opted to build a permanent home there. 

It’s unclear how exactly Lucretia Garfield became acquainted with Greene & Greene, but we do know from the letters that she and Charles Greene wrote back and forth (available from USC’s Huntington Greene & Greene Virtual Archive) that they were actually distant relations. In this letter, Lucretia recommends the just-published Biography of the Rhode Island Greenes, written by Charles & Henry’s ancestor, George S. Greene – a Union general during the Civil War, and coincidentally, a founder of the American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects.

We also know from the correspondence that Lucretia was concerned about cost overruns (as were many of Greene & Greene’s clients), and that she requested some design modifications during the year and a half between their first letter in May 1903, and its date of completion in September, 1904. In October, she moved into her new house on leafy Buena Vista St., in the posh Oaklawn neighborhood of South Pasadena. She died in it 14 years later, at the age of 85.

So what did Lucretia’s digs look like? A state-of-the-art craftsman home, as you’d expect from the Greenes. From the street you can see many of the hallmarks of their work. The exposed beams that project from the side, and lay bare the structure of the house; the low eaves and squat door, reinforcing the feeling of horizontality; the irregularly sized shingle siding, and the piles of river rock enclosing the front porch, typical of the Japanese architecture that the Greenes so adored.

+Interior pictures of the Lucretia Garfield House (Compass, 2015)

The inside retains a free-flowing plan with wide entryways between rooms, pretty typical of the Greenes. There are five bedrooms and five bathrooms, and a sun room with a porch swing that Lucretia loved. The interior pictures from the home’s 2015 sale listing show a home full of natural light, top-notch woodwork and fin de siècle design touches, like the tall wainscoting and elaborate wallpaper. There’s a gorgeous fireplace in the living room (the NRHP form opines that it’s a Batchelder, most of the fireplaces in the great craftsman homes in LA were). 

There’s also a basement level, which opens up to the spacious backyard. In Lucretia’s day, this was a kitchen, and the living quarters for her cooks. In 2006 it took on a new life as a roomy recording studio, when the house was bought by singer-songwriter and producer Joe Henry and his wife Melanie Ciccone, Madonna’s sister. Henry recorded Grammy-winning albums by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the Carolina Chocolate Drops in the studio, plus music by all-time greats like Mose Allison, Allen Toussaint, Rodney Crowell, Meshell Ndegeocello, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, John Doe, Bonnie Raitt and countless others. 

Immaculate as it is, the Lucretia Garfield House is something of a transitional one in the Greene canon. They had codified a lot of their signature techniques and materials, but this house isn’t quite as intentionally integrated as the Gamble and Blacker “ultimate bungalows” of just a few years later. In those homes, the Greenes designed all the furniture, lighting and landscaping to work as a cohesive whole. 

That said, the Garfield House offers a unique opportunity for Greeneophiles: it is literally next door to the Howard Longley House (see visit #117), the earliest existing home designed by Greene & Greene. Going back and forth between the two addresses, it’s immediately apparent how far the brothers had come in the seven years between the two homes. The Garfield is leaps and bounds more sophisticated than the Longley. It’s a fascinating study in contrasts.

This home’s owners have been excellent stewards of the Greenes’ vision, modernizing the elements that needed modernizing, but otherwise keeping the integrity of the original plans. There is so much of the Garfield House that still looks like the Greenes intended it to. Even the deodar and Atlantic cedars planted out front in the early 1900s are still there today, reaching out to each other from across the brick walkway in a loving gesture of protection. 

Recommended Reading

+Lucretia Garfield House’s NRHP nomination form

+A Friendly Correspondence (GambleHouse.org, 2020)

+The Garfield House (Joe Henry’s blog, 2015)

+Historical Home Studio (Glendale News-Press, 2011)

+Floor Plans of the Lucretia Garfield House (Columbia Archives)

+USC’s Huntington Greene & Greene Archives