Pasadena Heritage Marks 50 Years Honoring the People Who Started It

Fifty years ago, a handful of people in their twenties and thirties gathered in a Pasadena living room and decided the city they loved was worth fighting for. On Saturday evening, many of them and several hundred of their successors gathered under the arches and banana palms of Castle Green to say thank you.

The occasion was Pasadena Heritage’s 50th anniversary gala, “Honoring Our Founders: An Evening at Castle Green,” held at the landmark Moorish-Revival apartment building on South Raymond Avenue that the organization’s earliest members once fought to save. Guests moved through the hotel’s tiled lobbies and red-curtained parlors for a cocktail reception before continuing out to a candlelit dinner on the lawn, where string lights were strung through the trees and a small orchestra played beneath the building’s arched breezeway.

The evening’s purpose was simple: to honor Claire Bogaard, William W. Ellinger III, Katie Harp McLane and James Marrin, the founders credited with turning a scrappy band of (very) active locals into one of the most effective preservation organizations in the country.

Pasadena Heritage board chair Michael Robleto opened the program, then turned the microphone over to a succession of elected officials who had come to pay their respects. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, a longtime ally of the organization, recalled learning that Pasadena Heritage now holds more than 80 historic preservation easements across the city, a number she called remarkable given the group’s beginnings. Chu walked through each founder’s contribution in turn: Bogaard’s leadership as the organization’s second board chair and, later, its executive director for fourteen years; Ellinger’s decades of work as a preservation architect; McLane’s role building the group’s first tours and public programs; and Marrin’s design work, including the organization’s original logo.

Mayor Victor M. Gordo also addressed the crowd, along with representatives sent on behalf of the state Senate, the State Assembly, the county Board of Supervisors and other local offices, each bearing certificates of recognition for the four honorees.

A short film, assembled from interviews with the founders and their families, filled in the origin story more intimately than any citation could. Bogaard recalled the organization’s earliest purpose: to speak out for neighborhoods and buildings that had no one else advocating for them. The group’s first real fight, a battle against a proposed shopping mall near the Civic Center, was one they lost. But a city plumber offered her an observation that stuck with her for fifty years: they may have lost the battle, but they had won the war, simply by getting the public to start paying attention. That shift in public awareness became the foundation for the group’s next and most consequential campaign, the fight to save Old Pasadena itself from demolition.

Steve Preston, the board’s vice chair for advocacy, introduced each honoree in turn, reading from biographical notes rather than the printed program, and encouraging the crowd to applaud freely rather than hold it until the end.

Bogaard, introduced first, spoke of the organization’s early years with clear affection, running through a long list of collaborators, seismic engineers, city staff and fellow board members who had helped along the way. She singled out the fight to save Bards Court, a bungalow court attributed to architect Myron Hunt, as one of her favorite projects, and credited the group’s decades-long opposition to extending the 710 Freeway through South Pasadena as a battle finally won.

McLane, who now lives in Oakland and returned for the occasion, described the organization’s earliest days with self-deprecating humor: how she and her fellow founders dressed professionally and carried business cards so that city officials would take them seriously, then packed the entire operation into the trunk of a car at the end of each meeting because they had no office. She recalled producing the group’s first walking tour of Prospect Park and organizing the original Colorado Street Bridge Party in 1978, and described the deliberate strategy she and her colleagues used of joining every city committee that might shape Pasadena’s future, a strategy she remembered them calling, simply, learning to “infiltrate.”

Ellinger, a restoration architect who has advised the organization since its founding, spoke briefly of the Bogaards’ home gathering in 1976 where it all began, and thanked his wife, Marcia, for tolerating what he estimated were hundreds of hours of volunteer work over five decades.

Marrin, a graphic designer who created the organization’s first visual identity, was introduced by his daughter, who described watching her parents discover a community of fellow enthusiasts through a chance meeting with Gamble House founding director Randell Makinson and architectural historian Robert Winter. That meeting, she said, led her parents to the small circle of people who would go on to found Pasadena Heritage.

Margaret McVey Thomas, the board’s vice chair for development, closed the formal tributes by announcing that the reference library at Blinn House, Pasadena Heritage’s longtime headquarters, would be renamed the Founders Library in honor of the four.

Sue Mossman, who joined the organization after its founding and went on to lead it for decades, offered a final, personal word of thanks to the four honorees, crediting them with teaching her everything she came to know about historic preservation and nonprofit management.

The night closed with a cake bearing the organization’s new 50th-anniversary logo, an image of the Colorado Street Bridge rendered in gold, and with the founders themselves, seated on the lawn where their organization first saw action.

More information on Pasadena Heritage is available at pasadenaheritage.org.