160 N Oakland Ave
Pasadena, CA 91101, USA

The Edmund Blinn House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Edmund Blinn House was completed in 1906. Commissioned by Edmund Beardsley Blinn, retired from the wholesale lumber business in Chicago, the house was designed by Chicago architect George Washington Maher. It is significant under Criterion C as the only example of Maher's residential work on the west coast and as a fine example of Prairie School architecture, a Midwestern style that is not commonly found in the Pasadena area. The house was purchased from the Blinn family in 1941 by a local philanthropist and sold to the Women's City Club at a discount in 1945 to be used as their clubhouse and as a meeting place for a variety of other women's groups. Since 1941 it has played an important role in women's history in Pasadena by serving as the home and "incubator" of a number of post-war women's organizations. The Women's City Club has made only minor alterations to the house, adding a dining room annex, itself designed by the prominent local architect Myron Hunt, and enclosing the front porch with glass. These changes have not impacted the basic integrity of the original design.


The original owner was Edmund Beardsley Blinn, born in Keyesville, New York on July 30, 1861. His father having died at an early age, Blinn and his family moved to Chicago about 1868. After a minimal education in the public schools, Blinn went to work in a planning mill when he was fourteen years old. As a young adult, he became involved in the wholesale lumber business, first in Iowa and then back in Chicago. After a stint as a salesman with the S. P. Baker Company, Blinn went into business for himself. The E. B. Blinn Lumber Company was very successful, with large- scale clients, especially in the meat-packing industry. Blinn invested much of his money in agricultural land, including 20,000 acres of wheat land near Lewiston, Montana and vast citrus groves in Riverside, California. Blinn married the former Kate May Hoch of Winterset, Iowa on October 7, 1885. They were to have two daughters and two sons. Their last home in the east was in Oak Park.

After spending two winters in Pasadena, the Blinns retired there in 1905, as did so many wealthy Easterners and Midwesterners at the turn-of-the-20th-century, attracted by the climate and the city's growing reputation as a cultural and resort center. Edmund Blinn's brother, L. W. Blinn who was also in the lumber business, lived in Los Angeles. As the site of their permanent home Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Blinn chose Ford Place, a T-shaped street encompassing a four-square-block area east of the prestigious Maryland Hotel on Los Robles Avenue between Walnut and Union (formerly Herkimer) Streets. It was an exclusive subdivision, created in 1902 by Pasadena developer Tod Freeman, Sr. (At one time red sandstone pillars stood at each entrance to Ford Place with chains that could be drawn across to keep out undesirables.) As opposed to many of their fellow Pasadenans, the Blinns selected a non-local architect to design their new home. They had no doubt become acquainted with architect Maher's work when they lived in Oak Park, their residence on Home Avenue being just across the street from the Pleasant Home mansion that Maher had designed in 1897. The Blinns were probably confident that Maher would design for them a truly unique residence, unlike any other in Pasadena.

Blinn did not completely retire from his business interests. He would visit Chicago at least twice a year to check on the condition of his company. He served as a director of both the First National Bank of Pasadena and the Union Oil Company of California, owned a prominent office building in downtown Pasadena, and was president of the American Cement Products Company which made the Marbelite cement lamp posts used throughout Los Angeles. Blinn was also remembered as a generous supporter of worthy causes.

Edmund Blinn died at his Ford Place home on February 2, 1922 at the age of 61. Mrs. Blinn continued living in their home until she sold it in 1941.

The architect George Washington Maher was born in Mill Creek, West Virginia on December 25, 1864. He studied architecture in Chicago in various professional offices (working as an apprentice draftsman side-by-side with Frank Lloyd Wright when they were both employed by Lyman R. Silsbe). Maher was also said to have been a friend of famed Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan. Maher started his own practice in 1888. He developed a specialty in unique residential design and also made a name for himself in the creation of memorials and monuments. He took on some commercial and school jobs as well. Maher was particularly interested in the effect that architecture could have on urban planning and wrote several articles exploring that subject. He became a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and served as president of its Chicago chapter in 1918. He also chaired the committee on municipal art and the town planning committee. A resident of Kenilworth, a suburb of Chicago, Maher was in business with his son by the early 1920s. After the popularity of the Prairie style faded, he was reduced to designing homes in traditional styles. George Maher committed suicide on September 12, 1926, said to have been frustrated in his dream of creating a whole new style of architecture indigenous to the United States.

Maher's residential work has been characterized as a highly personal interpretation of the Prairie School style—sometimes called a "second Chicago School." His work was very consistent, often easily identifiable as his own. His designs were very popular with both the public and fellow architects who imitated him widely. One critic has stated that Maher's "influence on the Midwest was profound and prolonged and, in its time, was certainly as great as was Wright's" (Brooks 36). Many of his houses were built outside the Chicago city center and, as a result, spread the Prairie influence into small towns. Prairie school architecture has been described as "ahistorical"—i.e., not concerned with the interpretation of traditional styles. It was embraced by individualists who preferred a house that was not rooted to any particular time or place. Although firmly based in the flat-walled Prairie School style, Maher's houses tended to incorporate at least hints of other unrelated styles, such as English Arts and Crafts, American Colonial Revival, and even Italian Revival. Maher-influenced houses began to appear all over the country before World War I—two-story rectangular boxes with banded windows, low-hipped roofs, slanted corner piers, and shallow arches over the front doors.

The shallow segmental arch with its unique projecting ends, so prominent on the Blinn house, occurs in a number of residences that Maher designed beginning in 1904 and seems to be one of his "trademarks." Another unique Maher touch was the use of what he called the "motif-rhythm" theory wherein a local indigenous plant and/or a recurring geometric shape was featured as a motif in both the exterior and interior design, becoming a unifying decorative element, similar to a repetitive theme in music. These motifs were often repeated in wall stenciling, fabrics, glass, and in mosaic work above the fireplace. Although the water lilies and wisteria used as motifs in the Blinn house were not indigenous plants, they are consistently used throughout. (It has also been pointed out that two other Maher-designed houses under construction at the same time in the east used the same motifs, leading to speculation that he was also conscious of the economics of bulk production.)

Maher seems to have been proud of his plans for the Blinn house: he exhibited them in 1906 at a gathering of the Chicago Architectural Club. Most of Maher's surviving works are in Illinois and Wisconsin. Except for a combined water tower/library building in Fresno, built in 1894, the Blinn house is thought to be the only Maher design on the west coast.

The second the current owner of the Blinn House is the Women's City Club of Pasadena. Women's groups have been influential in the physical and cultural growth of Pasadena from its earliest years. Literary and musical societies were founded as far back as the 1870s in the settlers ‘•attempts to create a civilized and cultural setting for their frontier town. Other groups concerned themselves with the betterment of education, charitable endeavors, and business opportunities for women. Pasadena's attraction to wealthy winter visitors and later year-round residents was partly based on their perception that it was a relatively sophisticated young community and, symbiotically, their patronage and participation helped to make it so. The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is the oldest women's organization to have any longevity, its local chapter having been formed in 1883. It was followed by the Women's Reading Club of 1888, which later became the still-thriving Shakespeare Club. The Women's Civic League was founded in 1911 for "the public consideration of social and economic gestions" and provided most of the inspiration for the City's still-impressive Beaux Arts civic center in the 1920s. The Pasadena Women's Club, organized in then-unincorporated East Pasadena, was founded in 1912 and remained the oldest purely social and philanthropic female organization in the community until it disbanded a few years ago. Only the Shakespeare Club and the Pasadena Women's Club had their own clubhouses.

By the early 1940s it had become apparent that there was a need in Pasadena for a club house for all the other women's organizations that had no headquarters. Gloria Gartz, a wealthy resident who was heir to the Crane plumbing fortune, had long felt that the activities of women merited the dignity and convenience of a central meeting place. The Blinn House seemed to her an ideal location, near downtown Pasadena and across the street from the men-only University Club. In 1941, Ms. Gartz convinced Mrs. Blinn, who had been contemplating its sale, that this would also be a way to preserve her home from demolition or from conversion into a boarding house. After the house was sold to Ms. Gartz it was turned into a clubhouse and she invited various women's groups to meet there. It was known for a while as the Women's Clubhouse, used monthly by as many as thirty organizations and 1,500 women.

By 1945 it was evident that the clubhouse could not economically sustain itself under this arrangement. A new non-profit and non-political organization, called the Women's City Club, was formed. It pioneered the idea of having as its membership base not only individuals but other women's organizations. By the end of 1945, thirteen organizations and 357 individuals had joined. By 1946, the success of the new club made possible the addition of a wing containing a main dining room and a smaller dining room, known as the Newcomb Room, which together would seat 162. Daily luncheons and weekly dinners were instituted (a total of about 2,500 meals served per month), a schedule which continues to the present day. A number of regularly scheduled social events, lectures, and cultural programs have also been maintained through the years.

In December 1945 the Women's City Club purchased the property from Miss Gartz for about half its appraised value. This included not only the Blinn house and some of its furnishings but also a vacant lot to the north which gave the Club a 150-foot frontage along Los Robles Avenue. A lot in back of the clubhouse was purchased in 1960 to provide additional parking. (Sanborn maps indicate that the surviving garage may have been moved from the northeast to the southeast corner of the property sometime after 1930; however, there is no building permit on file to support this.) In 1964 the front porch of the Blinn house was enclosed and christened the Garden Room. Major restoration work and structural repairs were undertaken in 1995-96 thanks to a bequest from a Club member.

Besides its own activities, the Women's City Club continues to provide a home for a number of other organizations (some now with both men and women members). Among them: the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, founded in 1936; the Pasadena Council of Women's Clubs, representing more than fifty organizations; the Women's Civic League, mentioned above; Zonta; Altrusa; American Association of University Women; Soroptimists; Pasadena Toastmistress Club; Business and Professional Women; Browning Society; and the Junior League. It also has reciprocal agreements with other clubs across the nation so that traveling members can find a congenial atmosphere in which to conduct a meeting or relax.

The Women's City Club has successfully carried out the three major aims of its charter: "1) to serve as a center for women's civic, cultural, and educational activities; 2) to provide a convenient place...for the business, professional and civic-minded women of the city to meet; and 3) to provide a place to entertain distinguished visitors to the city." For many years it was one of the only places in town that a businesswoman would feel comfortable meeting and entertaining her clients.

When organized in 1945, the Club adopted the revolutionary idea of not only being open to individual members but also to other organizations as well, providing a home to smaller business, professional, and charitable women's groups that otherwise would have had none. It also provided a supportive environment for females in the business and political worlds to develop their interests in areas that were formerly perceived to be for men only.

In summary, the Edmund Blinn House is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C. Although the Women's City Club has made some additions and alterations to the building, it has retained its integrity and is still readily recognizable, inside and out, as the single- family residence that it once was. Its surroundings, although changed from single-family residential to institutional (the old Ford Place neighborhood now being owned by Fuller Theological Seminary), still retains much of its early look. Many of the original residences have been adaptively re-used as academic and student centers, but their exteriors have been restored. Ford Place between the Women's City Club and Union Street has become a landscaped pedestrian mall, but most of the original parkway plantings still survive.

The exterior architecture and interior design of the Edmund Blinn House are significant as the only example of the residential work on the west coast of Chicago architect George Maher, famed for his very personal and influential interpretation of the Prairie School style. It is also probably the earliest example of Prairie School architecture in Pasadena. ("La Miniatura"—a house near the Arroyo Seco designed by Frank Lloyd Wright—was not built until 1923.)

The City of Pasadena recognized. The significant architectural and social history of this property in 1978 by declaring it Cultural Heritage Landmark #16. Historian Ann Scheid has called it "one of Pasadena's most significant landmarks" (Scheid 127). David Gebhard and Robert Winter in their book Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide has declared that "the interior, though somewhat remodeled, is nevertheless still exciting" (Gebhard and Winter 401).

Following is documentation of the original construction and alterations made to the building. The City of Pasadena issued building permit #3383 on November 16, 1905 for a fourteen-room, two-story frame residence to be constructed at 60 Ford Place (now 160 North Oakland Avenue). The cost was to be $14,000—a significant sum of money in 1905 when the average Pasadena house and lot could be purchased for about $3,000. (An article in a local newspaper the previous October had stated that the value of the new house would be $40,000.) A. B. Tirrill of Pasadena was the contractor.

Permits #3163J and 3578J, issued on January 10 and August 30, 1946 respectively, allowed the addition of an annex containing two dining rooms totaling 2,261 square feet. Hunt & Chambers of Pasadena (a partnership of Myron Hunt and H. C. Chambers) was identified as the architect for this project that had a combined cost of $11,000.

On August 16, 1949, permit #464A was issued for a remodeling and expansion of the kitchen that was to cost $2,500. No architect was identified on the permit. Permit #2414, issued on July 5, 1963, allowed the closing in on the front porch. W. L. Reichardt of Los Angeles was the architect and Ted Tyler of Pasadena was the contractor for this $5,000 project.

The earthquake-damaged upper parts of the two brick chimneys were removed in July 1971 and replaced with metal stacks. The cost was $950. Permit #40670 was issued on August 9, 1972 to convert a closet into a powder room on the first floor of the original house. No architect was listed for this $1,000 project.