654 E Mariposa St
Altadena, CA 91001, USA

- National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:
The Andrew McNally house is significant under Criterion B for its association with the original owner, Andrew McNally, and his efforts to promote the residential growth of Altadena during the period 1888 to 1904. The McNally house was, the first substantial home built along Mariposa Street ("Millionaire's Row") subsequent to Altadena's founding in 1887. Early newspaper articles, postcards, and professional photographs of Altadena often bore images of McNally's house. These, together with surviving pieces of his correspondence and bis personal invitations to visit and buy property in Altadena, were evidence of McNally's role as an early civic booster, especially among his influential friends and business associates from the East. His house and its once magnificent grounds served as a veritable icon to which later wealthy settlers along the street could aspire. The period of significance ends in 1904, the year of Andrew McNally's death, when his house was no longer used to entertain and impress would be new Altadena’s. The property has had only three resident owners since the death of Mrs. McNally in 1924. The first subdivision of the McNally land occurred in 1925, when the property was reduced to just under four acres. In 193 6, It was further reduced to one and one-half acres. Since the current owners purchased it in 1955, the parcel's area has stood at .82-acre. The house itself is remarkably intact, both inside and out.

Detailed Statement of Significance and Historical Background
In May 1887, Andrew McNally, a founder and vice-president of the Rand-McNally Map Company of Chicago, commissioned renowned Pasadena architect Frederick L. Roehrig to design a $50,000 winter home for him and his family on a fifteen-acre parcel in the new community of Altadena at the southeast corner of Mariposa Street and Santa Rosa Avenue. The builder is unknown. While the house was under construction, McNally further improved the property with a carriage house, trees, gardens, fish ponds, an aviary, and other amenities. The property was reached via a ^9-ili^oad line that ran along the bottom of his property, giving McNally and his visitors direct access to Pasadena and beyond by private rail-car.

"Residential development" is the central theme in the history of the growth of Altadena, since commercial and industrial development has never been a significant factor in the make-up of the community. McNally commissioned the building of his house later in the same year (1887) that the short-lived Pasadena Improvement Company was founded and initially laid out a new community on the grounds of the old Woodbury Ranch. The Woodbury brothers, Fred and John, had purchased the 937-acre property in 1882 from the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, the founders of Pasadena, who perceived the dry northern foothill land as "worthless”.

The Woodbury’s, having built an Italianate-style house for Fred on the property (still extant and now on the National Register), were the principal investors in the Improvement Company. They hoped to sell lots to affluent buyers. . Probably inspired by what was happening along Pasadena's South Orange Grove Avenue, they envisioned visitors from the East who might want to buy rural lots and build winter homes in the new community they named "Altadena." Unfortunately for the Woodburys, just one year after the founding of their development firm. Southern California experienced a real estate bust, causing John Woodbury to leave California for good and his brother, evidently not an aggressive type, to tend to his ranch rather than attempt to sell real estate. The Woodbury’s had sold only a, few lots before the bust occurred. One of the largest parcels had been purchased by Andrew McNally.

In fact, it was McNally, and not the Woodbury’s, who played the major role in Altadena's early development. ^ As described in more detail below, Andrew McNally "proved to be one of Altadena's most influential and persuasive boosters" (Peterson 34).

Andrew J. McNally was born in Armagh, Ireland in 1835, the eighth child of a Scottish father and a mother of Dutch descent. He attended the "common schools," but at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a John McWaters of his hometown from whom he was to learn the printing trade. After seven years of apprenticeship, and still in his early twenties, McNally emigrated to New York where he found work as a compositor for now Sc Company. In 1859, McNally relocated to Chicago (stopping along the way for short jobs in Albany, Toronto, and Buffalo) and became a foreman in the "job shop" of the Evening Journal. (The job shop evidently handled printing jobs not directly related to the publication of the newspaper.) Not long thereafter, McNally found employment with William H. Rand who had been running his own print-shop on Lake Street since 1856. Still not ready to settle down, McNally headed for Memphis where he went to work for a newspaper known as the Avalanche. Condemned for its ant secessionist views, the newspaper was burned to the ground by angry critics. McNally then returned to the relative safety of Chicago where he found employment with the Chicago Tribune., In 1861, their job shop was put up for sale and McNally, re-teaming with his old boss William Rand, purchased it with borrowed money.