Pasadena Heritage Co-Founder James Marrin Dies at 86

James “Jim” Marrin, a graphic designer who helped found Pasadena Heritage in 1977 and designed the preservation group’s first logo, died Aug. 19 at 86, about five weeks after the organization honored him at Castle Green during a ceremony opening its 50th-anniversary year.

Pasadena Heritage Executive Director Dr. Bridget Lawlor, in a statement last week remembering Marrin, said the organization had lost one of its founders and one of Pasadena’s great champions of its historic architecture and the city’s character.

Marrin was honored on Saturday, July 11, alongside Claire Bogaard, William W. Ellinger III and Katie Harp McLane at “Honoring Our Founders: An Evening at Castle Green,” an event the organization said would recognize advocacy that helped preserve many of Pasadena’s most treasured places.

“Jim understood something that remains at the heart of Pasadena Heritage’s work today: the places and objects that give a community its character cannot be taken for granted,” Lawlor said in the statement. “They survive because people recognize their value, speak up for them, and are willing to act. Jim was one of those people.”

Marrin was born July 14, 1940, in Inglewood and studied graphic design at UCLA, where he met his wife, Janeen, according to an obituary published by the Los Angeles Times. The couple moved to Pasadena after falling in love with the Gamble House during a 1967 visit, according to the obituary.

“A graphic designer, collector, curator, teacher, and preservationist, Jim had an extraordinary eye for things others might overlook,” Lawlor said.

Long before Arts and Crafts furnishings became highly sought-after, Pasadena Heritage said, Jim and his wife, Janeen, were finding pieces at swap meets and thrift stores and filling their Pasadena bungalow with them, and their appreciation extended beyond objects to the architecture and character of Pasadena itself. The couple became major lenders to the 1974 California Design 1910 exhibit at the Pasadena Center.

“When that character increasingly came under threat, Jim helped do something about it,” Lawlor said. “In 1977, he joined with fellow preservationists to found Pasadena Heritage.”

Marrin designed the organization’s logo and branding. Pasadena Advertising, which created Pasadena Heritage’s new identity in 2013, said the original arch-and-tree mark had served the group for more than 37 years. In a statement published by the agency, Pasadena Heritage credited Marrin with designing that original logo.

“Nearly fifty years later, the organization they created continues the work they believed was so important: protecting the historic places that tell Pasadena’s story and advocating for thoughtful change that respects what makes this city special,” Lawlor said.

“Jim’s influence reached far beyond Pasadena Heritage. He lent his talents to exhibitions, historic house tours, graphic design, teaching, the Friends of the Castle Green, and countless other projects,” Lawlor said. “Through it all, he remained a collector in the truest sense — not simply accumulating beautiful things, but understanding them, caring for them, and sharing his enthusiasm with others.”

Professionally, Marrin worked at agencies including Chiat/Day/Mojo and Robert Miles Runyan & Associates, where he contributed graphics for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, according to the obituary. He taught art at Los Angeles Valley College. He and Janeen later designed interiors for public tours of Greene & Greene’s Blacker and Duncan-Irwin houses.

Marrin later moved into Castle Green, the 1898 landmark designed by architect Frederick Roehrig with Moorish, Spanish and Victorian elements, and turned his collector’s eye to early 20th-century photography, mid-century furnishings and sculpture.

In 1993 he and his daughter Erika co-founded Friends of the Castle Green, formed as a support group to raise funds for historic restoration to the standards of the Secretary of the Interior and to raise awareness of the building’s significance, according to the obituary. The two later co-directed the gallery ADXX and served on the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Modern Committee.

Their collaborations continued until Erika’s death in 2013 and included the design of Randell Makinson’s book “Greene & Greene: The Passion and the Legacy.” Janeen Marrin, a founding member of Pasadena Heritage herself, died in 2020.

In his later years Marrin was a devoted caregiver to his grandchildren, Lucy and Leo, the children of his daughter Emily.

Edward “Ted” Bosley, an author and former director of the Gamble House, said Marrin “was a big reason Pasadena is what it is,” according to the obituary.

“I feel especially grateful that this summer we had the opportunity to honor Jim alongside Claire Bogaard, William W. Ellinger III, and Katie Harp McLane at our 50th Anniversary kickoff at Castle Green,” Lawlor said. “To celebrate Jim in a place he loved, surrounded by a preservation community he helped create, now feels particularly meaningful.”

A memorial service is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 18, at Castle Green, 99 S. Raymond Ave. In lieu of flowers, donations are requested for Friends of the Castle Green or Pasadena Heritage.

“The best way we can honor Jim is to continue the work he helped begin,” Lawlor said. “Every time we recognize beauty worth protecting, advocate for a threatened historic place, introduce someone to Pasadena’s architectural legacy, or help ensure that something meaningful survives for another generation, we carry a piece of that legacy forward.”

“Pasadena is a more beautiful and more deeply understood place because Jim Marrin cared enough to protect it,” she said. “We will miss him, and we will always be grateful that he did.”

Memorial service: Sunday, Oct. 18. Castle Green, 99 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena.