Last week I had the opportunity to wander around the Arroyo Seco corridor with Bob Inman. Bob, the author of Finding Los Angeles by Foot, An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (6th Edition), and Urban Hikes Southern California, is a (if not the) foremost expert on all things LA. The Arroyo Seco (Spanish for Dry Creek) flows (or trickles) down from the San Gabriel Mountains through Pasadena and northeast Los Angeles and joins the Los Angeles River less than two miles north of Los Angeles’ Union Station. The Arroyo Seco corridor is one of the many fantastic places to explore in Los Angeles and is an ideal place to wander.
I first visited the Arroyo Seco corridor when I went on a wonderful Bob Inman-led walk several years ago before Covid. My most distinct impression from that walk was the abundance of cobblestone structures throughout the Arroyo Seco basin. Since I’m always on the lookout for ubiquitous details that give an area distinction, I thought that the use of cobbles and boulders pried out of a dry streambed to build a wall to be very cool and couldn’t wait to come back to see if the cobbles that I noticed were a one-off or something widely used throughout the area.
And finally, after all these years, I was able to get back Los Angeles last week to get another crack at walking around the Arroyo Seco area with Bob Inman.
As background regarding the use of cobblestones in the Arroyo Seco area, Charles Lummis pried out boulders and cobbles out of the dry streambed and built an amazing cobblestone house called El Alisal on the banks of Arroyo Seco at the base of Los Angeles’ Mount Washington neighborhood in 1895. In his time Lummis was a larger than life character who at one time was an anthropologist, journalist, activist, and you name it.
This is just a peek at El Alisal. The house is now owned by the City and only opened occasionally. I am told that the interior of the house is spectacular.
This is Arroyo Seco next to El Alisal. As you can see, the arroyo is now encased with concrete and houses a freeway.
But if you go upstream near the Colorado Boulevard bridge in Pasadena, you’ll find a small stretch of the arroyo that is still wild. And as you can see there are plenty of cobbles and boulders waiting to be pried out of the streambed.
Less than two miles upstream from the Lummis house in the Highland Park neighborhood, Clyde Browne, the grandfather of the singer Jackson Browne, also began pulling rocks out of the same dry streambed in 1915 to build his dreamhouse – Abbey San Encino. It took several years of work before Clyde could finally move his family into the Abbey in 1924.
Abbey San Encino
Check out the details. It must be amazing inside the house.
But El Alisal and Abbey San Encino are only the beginning. As you wander upstream, you’ll continue to see cobblestones the entire way. And as a bonus, with much of the area developed in the first part of the last century, the Arroyo Seco basin seems to be the epicenter of the American Craftsman or California Craftsman architectural movement. The abundance and quality of the architecture is outstanding, and it will be one “wow” moment after another.
Just up the hill from Abbey San Encino, the local library (of more recent construction) pays homage to the cobblestone buildings.
The local library.
This wall is just across the street from the library.
And if you just want to stay in Highland Park, you’ll find plenty to catch you attention as you wander around.
You’ll find plenty of murals.
And other items to catch your eye. I only wish that the kids were playing baseball rather than soccer when I walked by.
But if you want to stick to cobblestones and wander amidst some the most spectacular Craftsman houses ever built, you can save some steps by taking the Metro one stop north to South Pasadena.
Even the Highland Park Metro stop pays homage to cobblestones.
You’ll start running into cobblestones the moment you step off the South Pasadena Metro platform to begin your amazing walk.
This horse watering trough was built in 1906 and is right where you step off the platform in South Pasadena.
And this craftsman house was right around the corner from the Metro station.
Walk a little more and you’ll run into some really fabulous houses.
In an area with hilly topography, you’ll eventually run into the best of all possible signs.
“Not A Through Street” usually means that we’ll soon reach a stairway or a path. That’s Bob up ahead.
And sure enough, it’s a stairway!
Check out that root at the bottom of the stairway.
And here’s a better look at the root. It’s from a Moreton Bay Fig tree.
As we continued walking, we kept running into more and more cobblestones and fantastic examples of Craftsman and other types of homes.
That old water tower has been converted into a house.
It’s almost as if a cobblestone pillar with a craftsman lantern on top was an obligatory feature for almost all of the homes.
In several places, we followed paths and stairways down to the banks of the arroyo.
We eventually reached the Ernest A. Batchelder house. Batchelder was the premier tilemaker during the Arts & Crafts era, and his tilework can be found in many 1920s buildings.
This is a Batchelder tile with a Mayan design. It was installed at the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque when the coffee shop was remodeled in 1922. The remodeling was directed by Mary Jane Colter who designed the hotels at the Grand Canyon.
And yet another fantastic Craftsman house.
I especially liked the way plants and different size cobbles and boulders were used to build this wall.
Is this the most fantastic fireplace that you have ever seen? It was designed by Greene and Greene – the premier architects of the Craftsman era.
By the time we reached the fantastic chimney, it was starting to get too warm for us to continue our walk. So we headed to the nearest Metro station and took the train back to our starting point. With a great, and getting better, Metro system and comprehensive bus network, Los Angeles is a perfect place for a walking and wandering adventure. No matter how far you go, it’s easy to get back to your starting point.
And with that our wandering adventure came to an end. Please keep in mind, what I have shown is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that I could have shown, but it would have meant turning a blogpost into a book. And as for my initial question, the answer is Yes! Cobblestones are not a one-off; they are ubiquitous to the Arroyo Seco basin. And as for making the trip to Los Angeles, it was a perfect idea for a wandering adventure. If Wandering is allowing yourself to see and then letting what you see guide you on where you go, the Gentle Art of Wandering is having ideas to get you out the door in the first place so you can start wandering. And once you start wandering, it will be one amazing discovery after another!
July 17, 2024 at 10:18 am
After that great introduction to the cobblestones of Arroyo Seco I hope that you will go back and show us more.
July 16, 2024 at 12:47 pm
Another great post. Your posts are a great cleanse from all the (mostly bad) news.
July 16, 2024 at 1:34 pm
thanks
July 15, 2024 at 12:45 pm
It was great to walk with you, David. You illustrate and describe the cobblestones of the Arroyo Seco very nicely here. Just because it fits the narrative: counting from the final photo of the fabulous chimney, photo #3 (captioned: “And yet another fantastic Craftsman house”) is of the Jean Mannheim home and studio built 1913. Mannheim was German-born painter who would become in important California regional impressionist – very much in keeping with the whole early 20th century culture of the Arts and Crafts along the Arroyo Seco.