This year’s Pasadena Showcase House of Design home—a 10-bedroom, 12-bath, sprawling 12,260 square-foot Tudor Revival home on Oaklawn Avenue in South Pasadena—features 21 interior designers and three exterior and landscape designers. The regal 1905 mansion anchors a historic Greene & Greene planned neighborhood of century-old homes.
The spectacular makeover opens to the public for touring this Sunday, April 24.
As does each Showcase home each year, the Hawgood home offered unique opportunities for local designers to show off new design approaches and concepts, as well as appliances and innovations.
Designer Denise Bosley, for example, chose to redesign the laundry room, of all places, but in her vision, the room became the “laundry cafe.”
“They wanted it to be a laundry room, but I thought it was such a great space with all of the windows, that it would be a shame to just have it just be that, and it’s such a big space.”
Noting the large space and counter and work area, Bosley added, “Now this is a destination room. So you can do work at the work desk that we have here. And then we also have a coffee bar.”
The room also features a pullout ironing board hidden in the sideboard, as well as a farmhouse sink, matching the home’s original English country style.
Along with those features are original old English country-style windows, which swing inward, and are attached with hooks to the ceiling, for hot summer afternoons.
“That was another reason why I chose this room,” Bosley said.
Karen Billman is designing the “fit stop bathroom,” a combination of a small workout room featuring a rowing machine and an Echelon Digital workout mirror, and collection of hand weights adjacent to a more traditional bathroom.
The walls are covered with a professional-grade fabric wallpaper that can stand up to any workouts of its own.
“You can throw water on it or bleach, and it will still stay clean,” said Billman. “It’ll be perfect for a gym and they usually use it for theaters, but we decided to use it because you sweat in here, right? And sometimes you might spill water.
The gym mat flooring is provided by Johnson Fitness and Wellness in Pasadena, who also provided the rowing machine and medicine balls.
Designer Jeanne K. Chung, of cozystylishchic.com, chose to redo the kitchen, welcoming the challenge it afforded her.
Said Chung Monday, “This is a modern take on the traditional English kitchen, but we put in today’s modern appliances.”
As Chung admitted, “This was not an easy room to work with. I believe it was an addition or it was a remodel in the 1950s, and it hadn’t been touched since then. So it was very disjointed from the rest of the house.”
Chung wanted to “bring the kitchen back so that it flows with the rest of the house. And our inspiration was the traditional English Tudor architecture. Right, of course. Chung also brought in some metals which were popular in the early 1900s.
“The silver finishes are gaining popularity right now as well,” she pointed out. “So believe it or not, this is trending.”
Built for Mr. Harry Hawgood, an English civil engineer who designed railways and waterways all over the world, the home’s concrete construction bypassed popular wood framing of the time, leading many architectural observers to surmise that Mr. Hawgood himself was the architect.
With a concrete construction, the home contains rich wood interiors and intriguing period details including stained glass windows, ornate beamed ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling travertine fireplaces. Landscaped sunken gardens wrap around the home with scenic paths leading down to the hidden edges of the property.
Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts, an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization, has been supporting local music and arts programs since 1948. With more than 200 members, the organization primarily raises funds from the Showcase House, which has provided more than $23 million to nonprofit organizations, in support of music education, scholarships, concerts, and music therapy.
You can visit the Showcase House! For more about tours and tickets see: https://pasadenashowcase.org/
