Developing a Style

In late 1904, the South Pasadena Realty and Improvement Co. contracted with the Greenes to design a pair of entrance-gate portals and an accompanying fence for the Oaklawn residential development, not far from the popular Raymond Hotel. An advertisement for the development read, for “those who want the best in every particular.”  The Greenes duly supplied thoughtful designs, calling for native arroyo stones for the pillars set on clinker-brick platforms, with timber and tile roofs. Both in materials and construction — down to the soft metal strap details on the wrought iron gates and the tapering of boulders from base to the top of each pillar — the portals encapsulated in miniature the aesthetic and quality that were coming to be identified with the firm of Greene and Greene.

The steel-reinforced concrete bridge, commissioned in 1906 by the same South Pasadena realty company, was designed to span rail tracks, cycleway, and a private roadway, running between the Fair Oaks thoroughfare and Oaklawn development. The bridge’s design of a slender roadway supported by five graceful arches was reminiscent of one Charles might have seen in England at Stourhead (near Bath) on his honeymoon journey. At the foot of the bridge, the Greenes also designed a waiting station, patterned after the entrance portals. An extra pillar that had been thought necessary to reinforce the bridge’s structure was recently removed as part of its restoration.