267 N El Molino Ave
Pasadena, CA 91101, USA

Theodore Parker Lukens House (Kislingbury,Roger E.,House) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Lukens house is one of the few remaining Victorians in Pasadena and one of the oldest houses in the city. The house in its setting exudes great presence and charm. Despite its large size (5000 sq. feet), it has a fairy-land quality because of its delicate and finely detailed dripping lathwork. Architectural writers David Gebhard and Robert Winter, in their Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California, describe the Lukens house as "one of the few vestiges of Victorianism left in the central city -- and it is a good one" Its unique and abundant decoration make it an exceedingly fine specimen worthy of preservation. The house is also significant because of its architect, Harry Ridgway, and its original owner, Theodore Parker Lukens. Ridgway was the first professional architect in Pasadena; he is noted for the quality and volume of his work as well as the diversity of styles in which he designed with equal ease. Theodore Parker Lukens is an important figure in Southern California because of his early association with the Sierra Club, his pioneering reforestation efforts, and his many civic offices as a pillar of early Pasadena.

Transplanted Canadian Harry Ridgway, the architect of the Lukens house, was born in 1843. In 1878, just four years after the Pasadena area had been settled by a group of Indiana colonists, he became the first architect to open an office there. In 1884 he became associated with C.B. Ripley, Pasadena's earliest contractor and builder, in a business venture: the first planning mill in the city which supplied lumber, house trimmings and furnishings for many of Pasadena's earliest structures. Ridgway's output was prodigious: he designed and built several hundred residences, nearly all of Pasadena's public-school buildings, the public library, several churches and almost all of the commercial structures on West Colorado Blvd., the early central business district. Among his notable individual buildings are the First National Bank, the Masonic Temple, the old Throop Institute (California Institute of Technology), the Arcade and Carlton Hotels, and Pasadena City Jail. Although almost all of Ridgway's buildings have been demolished or drastically altered, the Lukens house (1886-1887) and Hillmont (1887), two of the finest of Pasadena's Victorians, remain. He prided himself on not having an identifiable "Ridgway style." H.A. Reid, author of History of Pasadena (1895), credits Ridgway with "many original and diverse combinations of Venetians, Normans, Eastlakes, Old Spanish, Old Plantation, Italian, French Mansards, English and Colonial Dormers, Old English Queen Anne, Old English Elizabethans. Ridgway died at his home in Pasadena in September 1913.

Theodore Parker Lukens commissioned Harry Ridgway to build his two-story Victorian on a six-acre lot on Moline Avenue (El Molino Avenue) in 1886, six years after he had arrived in Pasadena. Born in Ohio in 1848, Lukens lived most of his early life in Illinois where he became interested in horticulture and, as a civic-minded citizen, served as town tax-collector, town trustee and treasurer of the fire company. Lukens helped Pasadena on its way to becoming a city of trees by growing fruit trees and grape vines for the early settlers. He later become the first real estate agent in town, and earned considerable income in Pasadena's real estate/building boom of 1885-86. An enthusiastic promoter of the city, he authored the first booklet written exclusively about it: "Pasadena, California, Illustrated and Described", and was the driving force behind the establishment of Pasadena's first public library. His many civic posts include: Justice of the Peace (1884), President of the Pasadena City Council (i.e. Mayor) (1890-96), President of the Pasadena Board of Trade, of the Pasadena Mutual Building and Loan Association, and of the National Bank of Pasadena, member of the Board of Directors of the Pasadena Star newspaper, member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and member of the Boards of Trustees of the Los Angeles State Normal School and Throop Polytechnic Institute.

During the 1890s, Lukens made extensive pioneering explorations of Yosemite, the San Gabriels and San Bernardino Mountains, taking voluminous and detailed notes of his observations, collecting botanical specimens, and recording many nature scenes in hundreds of photographs. As he shared his research with prominent naturalist, his reputation as a forester grew. In 1894, Lukins became a charter member of the fledgling Sierra Club; in 1895, he met John Muir on an outing in Yosemite and they became life-long friends. Through the Sierra Club, John Muir vigorously promoted conservation in Northern California, while Lukens spearheaded the Club's efforts in Southern California.

In 1892, planting thousands of pines, Lukens carried out the first experiments in reforestation ever made in California in the Henninger Flats area of the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena, which remains today as an experimental nursery and recreation area run by the Los Angeles County Department of Forestry. For six years, Lukens was associated with the U.S. Department of Forestry directly under Director Gifford Pinchot, famous conservationist who instituted the first forestry program in the United States. In 1904, in San Luis Obispo County, California, Lukens began a eucalyptus plantation which today has turned into an aromatic forest which stretches for miles. He died in 1918 and was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Pasadena.

In his honor were named Lukens Lake in Yosemite National Park and Mt. Lukens in the San Gabriel Mountains. Because of his overwhelming contributions to woodland conservation, Theodore Parker Lukens has fittingly earned the title "Father of Forestry".and Walnut Street, continues straight west for 173 feet, makes a right angle and continues due north for 78 feet, makes another right angle, continuing due east for 173 feet, makes a right angle and continues due south for 78 feet to the beginning point of the boundary. Boundary encompasses the historic building and its grounds.