And just like the first robin of spring, the 2025 Pasadena Showcase House of Design has re-emerged, even before winter could get itself started.
Matt McIntyre, the first male president of the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts, addressed the Pasadena Rotary Club Wednesday to deliver the inside scoop on one of Pasadena’s “must attend” parties and programs.
Each spring, a local home is selected from in Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge or Arcadia, and transformed over six weeks to show off the work of scores of interior designers and landscape artists, from top to bottom from the gates to the pool, and from the garage to sweeping living rooms and luxurious bedrooms, magnificent bedrooms and even adjoining cottages.
McIntyre also revealed that this year, the selection committee visited the notorious Phil Spector home in Alhambra, for consideration.
“We chose not to go that route,” he said.
But, for just over a month, the Showcase House is the hottest ticket in town.
“Every year,” he said, “over 25,000 guests come through the house.”
From all those guests and the proceeds, the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts is able to provide millions of dollars to local music programs through the Gibson Grants program.
As McIntyre explained, in 2024, the Foundation made its largest gift ever, of a million dollars to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as to a host of community-based organizations they support.
The Pasadena Showcase House of Design organization was founded in 1948 as the Junior Philharmonic, a women’s organization established to fund the LA Phil and to bring concerts to Pasadena.
“We did not start out doing houses,” said McIntyre. “This will be our 60th house, but before this idea of a design house was developed, the Junior Philharmonic was doing things like Casino Night,” and, he relayed, “TV Watching nights, in which guests would gather at a members’ home. dressed as their favorite TV characters.”
This was obviously long before anyone in the civilized world could practically watch anything ever broadcast anywhere at any time, whenever they felt like it. At the time, it was simply the most au courant idea imaginable.
And then, in 1965, said McIntyre, a new idea was born—The Showcase House.
The first Showcase House was a home in San Marino on Park Place, perched at the top of the staircase leading down into Lacey Park.
“So that was our very first house,” McIntyre said. “It was a resounding success from day one. This is all before Pinterest and the Internet and all of those new things that help us see great design daily. This was really the public’s chance to see very high-end interior design and to get access to these magical sites.”
Since then, the Showcase House of Design Opening Night preview party packs in hundreds of guests, followed by thousands more as the house attracts thousands from all over, with guests bussed in from across the region and state.
The 2025 opening night preview party will be held January 10. Guests can walk through the stripped-bare walls, check out the plans, and meet the designers who will work their magic on the property.
The Showcase’s 60th house, whose exact location won’t be revealed until opening night, is a five-acre 1928 Reginald Johnson Bauer estate and gardens. The home is 14,000 square feet with an adjoining structure.
Expect quite a party.
“And then” McIntyre continued, “once the organization started making a little bit of money, they decided that we should do something for the next generation.”
The Foundation developed three musical programs for students all across the San Gabriel Valley. The first is a youth concert where fourth graders from the San Gabriel Valley are invited to see a performance specifically designed for them by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall.
To date, over 260,000 students have gone through the concert program.
As McIntyre told the Rotary members, “If you have a fourth grader, or have a relationship with a fourth grader, and you have an opportunity to chaperone this field trip, it is very well worth it. Grand Avenue in Downtown LA at Disney Hall is closed off, all the buses park there on Grand Avenue, and that in itself is sort of magical as you see these excited kids come off the bus.”
The Foundation’s Music Mobile program is also being re-imagined, post-COVID, with the Pasadena Conservatory of Music.
McIntrye revealed that the Foundation board got to see a preview of the new program and was very excited by its potential.
“It’s very interactive,” he said. “It will be outreach in the schools. We will still go out into the schools and execute that program.”
That program will go live in the 2025 academic year, he said.
The third music program—an instrumental competition— was developed in 1985, as an opportunity for pre-professional students to compete for prizes and be judged by the LA Philharmonic.
“This program is special to us because we have this great relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and we’re able to source active, current musicians to judge this competition.
“So imagine if you’re a student studying the flute and now you get to perform in front of a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic or in front of a committee of Los Angeles Philharmonic members and actually get that feedback.”
The program is now geared more directly to high school students, said McIntyre.
Finally, as McIntrye explained, the Foundation’s Gifts and Grants Program distributes funds between the Los Angeles Philharmonic and about 80 other nonprofit organizations.
“In our 76 years we’ve given $26 million to the community,” he said. “The Academy of Music for the Blind has been a regular recipient of one of our grants, and the Pacific Opera Project also has been a regular recipient , as well as the LA Master Chorale High School Choir Festival along with the LA Children’s Chorus.
The 2025 Pasadena Showcase House of Design officially opens April 20, and runs through May 18, 2025. More information is available at https://pasadenashowcase.org/
