For most of the year, the seven-story building at the corner of Raymond Avenue and Green Street keeps its secrets. The domes and arches visible from the sidewalk hint at what lies inside, but the doors stay closed. On June 14, they open.
The Castle Green’s annual spring tour, hosted by the nonprofit Friends of the Castle Green, will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 99 S. Raymond Ave. This year’s tour features a guest who connects the building directly to its origins: Scott Drake, a great great-grandson of Colonel George Gill Green, the Civil War veteran and patent medicine entrepreneur who built the landmark in 1898.
Drake’s appearance anchors a tour built around the legacy of the Green family in Pasadena and neighboring Altadena. A special exhibit in the Bridge Gallery will trace the life of Colonel Green, who made his fortune selling elixirs called Green’s August Flower and Boschee’s German Syrup before investing heavily in Pasadena’s development. The exhibit will also explore the Green family’s connections to Altadena, according to the Friends of the Castle Green website.
The self-guided tour grants access to spaces the public rarely sees: the original Moorish and Turkish rooms, the Grand Salon, the Palm Court, the lobby with its grand staircase, the restored bridge interior, and select private apartments, each decorated to reflect the tastes of its owner. Two historic talks will also be offered during the afternoon, according to the Friends of the Castle Green website. The building now houses approximately 50 individually owned condominiums. Visitors can also view a pop-up museum of artifacts from the Castle Green archives, including castings of the decorative “grotesques” and the plasterwork used to restore the bridge exterior, according to the Castle Green website.
The Friends of the Castle Green, a nonprofit formed in 1993, organizes the tours as its primary fundraising vehicle. Proceeds fund restoration projects that adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for historic preservation. The group’s most recent completed project was a restoration of the pedestrian bridge dome, finished in the summer of 2024 and funded entirely through previous tour proceeds, according to a report by Pasadena Now. That work, which cost more than $30,000, revealed a surprise: the dome was made of copper, not the sheet metal restorers had assumed. The Friends’ current focus is the restoration and painting of the building’s remaining domes, two on the roof, according to the organization’s website.
“We do the kind of preservation that needs to be done on a building that is now 126 years old,” Susan Futterman, chair of Friends of the Castle Green, said in a 2025 interview with Pasadena Now. “We are hopeful by having a tour, we help people appreciate what good preservation does for a building and a community.”
Architect Frederick L. Roehrig designed the building as the Central Annex to the Hotel Green the second of three buildings in the complex which Colonel Green had established on the opposite side of Raymond Avenue. Roehrig blended Moorish, Spanish, and Victorian elements into a structure of structural steel with brick walls and concrete floors Pasadena’s first fireproof building, constructed in response to a fire that had destroyed the nearby Raymond Hotel. The building opened on January 16, 1899, and quickly became a winter destination for wealthy East Coast visitors. The Hotel Green hosted presidents and was home to both the Tournament of Roses and the Valley Hunt Club. Among the original features that survive: the oldest wrought-iron, man-operated elevator on the West Coast, according to the Old Pasadena website.
When the resort era faded, a group of regular hotel guests purchased the complex in 1924 and divided the Central Annex into individually owned apartments. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and is also listed on the State Historic Register and the City of Pasadena’s Register of Historic Places.
Pasadena Heritage holds a conservation easement on the Castle Green’s exterior facade, an arrangement in place since 1988, according to Pasadena Now.
Tickets are $50 through Eventbrite and will also be available at the gate on the day of the tour. Food will be available for advance purchase from Old Pasadena restaurant Neighbors and Friends, and visitors may bring their own picnic baskets to eat on the grounds. No alcohol is permitted. There are steps into the building and six flights of stairs to reach the open apartments; limited elevator service is available for those with mobility issues. Nearby parking is available at the School House Parking Structure, 33 E. Green St., and Del Mar Station Parking, 230 S. Raymond Ave., which is also a Metro stop. For information, contact Susan Futterman at susanfutterman@mac.com or 626-824-8482.
The Castle Green opens to the public only twice a year once in June, once in December. For the rest of the calendar, the domes and arches stand quiet over Raymond Avenue, keeping 127 years of history behind closed doors.
