The Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts has started with its 52nd design home. Tickets are already available on line at the group’s website:www.pasadenashowcase.org.
The tickets are available for Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 pm; on Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Showcase House is closed on Mondays and will run all summer.
There is no parking near the house, which is located this year in La Canada Flintridge. Parking is at the Rose Bowl on most of the days the house is open to the public. On specific dates alternate parking is available and these dates are clearly noted on the website. Free shuttle service is available from parking to the house.
This year the home is in the Mission Revival style, and while the architect is not certain, the property is “thought” to have been designed by renowned local architect, Myron Hunt for Leon C. Riggs, at that time a well-known local restaurateur. Built in 1918, at one time the home was known as Dryborough Hall.
The main residence has 16,000-square-feet with a 2032-square-foot “guest house” on the property. In addition to two kitchens in the main house, there is a third in the guesthouse as well as an outdoor kitchen. The main house has five bedrooms, three with en suite bathrooms: the master, grandparents and guest suites. The final two bedrooms share a “Jack and Jill” bathroom. On the main floor there is the main salon, music, family, smoking and dining rooms on the first floor along with the kitchen, butler’s pantry and the guest suite.
There is an additional bedroom in the guesthouse that also features its own kitchen, living room and even its own laundry room and patio with gas barbecue. The guesthouse even has its own vegetable and butterfly gardens.
The property has several other gardens. There is the pool area with huge blown glass blooms as well as those that bloom naturally. There is also a welcoming entry garden, a pond and a sculpture garden. There is even a half court “sports court” and a putting green.
If all this were not enough, as usual there are the Shops at Showcase to entice visitors as well as a full restaurant, a grab and go eatery and a “Kasbah-like” pub in the basement of the main house.
As always with the Showcase House, it is the details that delight those attending. It is the unique wood on the piano in the music room that draws the eye. It is the wonderful fresco style painting on the ceiling of the outdoor lounge on the ground floor and the artist’s balcony as well as in the elevator, that intrigue. It is the technology in the soothing guest suite that fascinate. It is the painting with plants around the guest house that makes one yearn for a green thumb. These are the things that bring people back to visit the house year after year.
