- 1.5 miles
- 35-minute walk
- 10-minute bike ride
- Park on West California, just east of Arroyo
The lower Arroyo Seco was settled around 1910 by artists and other bohemians who were drawn to this lovely oak glen and wished to avoid the high-society types along South Orange Grove Avenue, just up the hill to the east. Many who built here were advocates of the Craftsman esthetic movement and its veneration of nature and simplicity. Most of their houses were built rugged and woody, often with foundations of cobblestones brought up from the Arroyo. One artist was painter Jean Mannheim whose 1909 studio is still intact at 500 S. Arroyo. The Pacific Oaks School at 714 W. California was established in 1945 using existing oak-shaded bungalows as its campus. The friendly creature at 686 W. California was designed by the Irish immigrant Louis DuPuget Millar for an Englishman, perhaps homesick for the thatched roofs of the Cotswolds. The architect/carpenter Louis Easton built one of his finest redwood houses at 620 S. Grand. At 626 S. Arroyo, the tilemaker and teacher Ernest Batchelder constructed his home and first production kilns.
Mannheim House and Studio, 1909
500 South Arroyo Boulevard
Designer: Jean Mannheim
Cheesewright House, 1910
686 West California Boulevard
Architects: Jeffrey, Van Trees & Millar
Craig House, 1908
620 South Grand Avenue
Designer: Louis B. Easton
Clapp House, 1874
549 La Loma Road
Designer: Unknown
Batchelder House, 1909
626 South Arroyo Boulevard
Designer: Ernest A. Batchelder
NEARBY:
La Casita del Arroyo, 1934
177 South Arroyo Boulevard
Architect: Myron Hunt
Perkins House, 1955
1540 Poppy Peak Drive
Architect: Richard J. Neutra
Church of the Angels, 1889
1100 Avenue 64
Architects: Arthur Edmund Street and Ernest A. Coxhead
