At sunset, the San Gabriel Mountains form a rosy sculptural
backdrop for Pasadena, a city of stately street trees and lush
gardens. Attracted by a paradisiacal climate, health seekers
and wealthy Easterners flocked to its resort hotels--the Green, the Maryland, the Huntington, the Painter, the Raymond--and built grand residences along Orange Grove and Grand Avenues. Scores of commercial and industrial buildings rose downtown, punctuated by public works, civic buildings, schools, and churches that doubled as works of art, like the Colorado Street Bridge, the Christian Science...