Members-only event on July 12, 2025, offers rare access to privately-owned Greene & Greene masterwork predating the famous Gamble House.
The Friends of the Gamble House will host their annual Summer Gathering on Saturday, July 12, providing members exclusive access to tour the privately-owned Duncan-Irwin house, one of Greene and Greene’s most important and distinctive architectural works. The three-hour event combines educational presentations with the rare opportunity to explore a historic home that is seldom open to the public.
“The Duncan-Irwin house stands today as a proud example of the best of the Greenes’ classic era,” according to event materials describing the architectural significance of the structure, which underwent significant transformation by Greene & Greene from 1906 to 1908.
The members-only gathering runs from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., beginning at the Gamble House before proceeding to the Duncan-Irwin residence. Tickets cost $40 per person, with advance pre-paid reservations only required by July 7, 2025. Members must sign in to verify their eligibility at the event.
The program includes a buffet lunch, updates from Executive Director Alex Rasic, and presentations by Jennifer Trotoux and Kelly Sutherlin McLeod, FAIA. McLeod brings particular expertise as the first female recipient of the prestigious Gamble House Scholar-in-Residence program and project architect for the internationally recognized Gamble House conservation project. Her Long Beach-based firm, founded in 1988, has worked on several distinctive Charles and Henry Greene projects, including the Tichenor, De Forest, Jennie Reeve and Pitcairn houses.
The Duncan-Irwin house represents an important milestone in Greene & Greene’s architectural evolution, predating their famous Gamble House. Standing on the edge of the scenic Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, the home has been maintained after years of careful stewardship.
In 1906, working for new owner Theodore Irwin Jr., a collector of art and rare books, Charles and Henry Greene began to reinvent the home, which had originally been a modest one-story shingled cottage moved to the bluff site by seamstress Katherine Duncan in 1901 and expanded by her to two stories in 1903. Greene & Greene’s redesign further expanded the home, nearly doubling its size and refining its architecture.
The architects created “an interior two-story courtyard with a fountain and water lilies, framed by a rustic pergola-like screen overhead,” which event organizers describe as “one of the Greenes’ most inspired architectural devices”. Dramatic in scale, yet intimate in feeling, it allowed moonlight to shine into the center of the home, to the delight of the Irwin family. The architects’ unmistakable style is evident in every corner, yet tantalizing vestiges of the original Duncan cottage still remain.
Drawing on influences such as Japanese temples and Swiss chalets, Charles and Henry Greene’s unmistakable style blends seamlessly in a home of sublime beauty and elegance.
Attendees must wear broad, flat-heeled shoes to protect historic rugs and floors. The tour site is not wheelchair accessible.
For reservations: (626) 793-3334 or info@gamblehouse.org. Not a member? Join today at gamblehouse.org.
