Elite designers reimagine Arcadia estate for Pasadena Showcase House of Design
How to top last year’s 60th Pasadena Showcase House of Design? The 1928 Bauer Estate and gardens boasted more than 15,000 square feet of stunning space, reimagined by interior and landscape designers into an impeccable display of design. But one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most celebrated home and garden tours is up to the task.
This year’s home hosted its Empty House Party Friday, offering a look at the 1907 Baldwin Oaks Estate in Arcadia before a troop of designers renovate it in four months. More than 30 spaces in the estate will get a high-style makeover, with tours offered from April 19 to May 17.
Dottie Ewing, benefit president, appreciates the history of the home, with its ties to California pioneer and businessman Elias “Lucky” Baldwin, founder of the city where the estate sits.
“For me, this house is very special because, No. 1, we haven’t been in Arcadia for a long time and we’re delighted to be back and welcomed by the people who live in Arcadia. It’s been lovely,” Ewing said. “And No. 2, we’ve never done this house. We have lots of great history here.”
Ewing said she is most excited to see how the laundry room is transformed into a little gem, judging by the designs from Arterberry Cooke Architecture in Los Angeles.
The kitchen, master bedroom, and living room promise to be stunning, too.
“It’ll be a lot every year,” Ewing added.
California pioneer Elias “Lucky” Baldwin built the shingle-style Arts & Crafts estate for his eldest daughter Clara Baldwin Stocker on two acres of land studded with oak trees. The woman known as “The Diamond Princess” lived up to the glitz in her title, hosting legendary parties in the home, which features a wraparound porch, grand oak staircase, park-like grounds with fruit trees and pines, a gazebo, and vintage poolside changing rooms.
The home’s five bedrooms retain many original architectural details that echo the place’s storied legacy rooted in California’s Golden Age.
Culling from top designers in the area, this year’s Showcase visionaries include local talents from Pasadena, Altadena, San Marino, La Cañada, San Dimas, South Pasadena, Azusa and Glendora. They’re given a main color to work with, Dunn-Edwards Color of the Year Midnight Garden green, and have four months to wield their magic, from the non-glamorous tasks of demolition to painting, and installing cabinets to perfecting design elements into a magazine-worthy look.
Iryna Helmy of her eponymous interior design company in San Marino was assigned the foyer powder room on the main floor, a tiny space covered in pink wallpaper pre-transformation.
Helmy was inspired by the estate’s front garden to design a green and gold haven with luxury touches such as custom wallpaper, flirty window treatments, “elegant and playful, just like Clara Baldwin,” she said.
The idea is to let people see that “even a small space can make a big statement,” Helmy added.
Rebecca Hansen is a Showcase veteran who’s familiar with what’s fun about the benefit, which raises money for four Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts philanthropies: gifts and grants, the Music Mobile instrumental competition, and a youth concert. Pasadena Showcase has contributed more than $27 million toward local music and arts programs since the first benefit happened in 1965.
“The hardest part is probably the time constraint, but even other limits, like not being able to, say, switch the toilet and the sink, is part of the challenge,” Hansen said.
When design afficionados see the reimagined vestibule and bathroom she is designing, “I hope they take away that you can mix patterns as long as there’s a cohesive color palette.”
Karen Billman of Pasadena is working on the home’s kitchen, inspired by a floral work by local artist, Danica Andler.
“I am most looking forward to the day we open because I love design and I love talking about it,” Billman said. “I just think if everybody can see our vision, it’ll be so fun.”
The room I’m most looking forward to is the purview of Jeanine Hattas Wilson, CEO and creative director of Hattas Studios in Los Angeles, and her twin Julie Kennedy, senior art director for the company.
The two didn’t see Clara Baldwin as the party girl she grew up to be, but the 7-year-old she was when the Baldwins first came to California in the 1870s. That was inspiration enough for the Hattas duo.
When they opened up the door to a 4×4 closet outside an upstairs bedroom, “we both started getting ideas right away and both thought this looks like a private cove for a 6 or 7-year-old girl to curl up with fairy tales,” Kennedy said.
That is exactly what they plan to create in that space: a hand-painted mural of a young girl set as different characters in stories, with interactive points to click on to hear fairy tales
Hattas Studios has nearly 10,000 projects and art commissions across the country under its belt, including custom wallpapers, sculptures aside from murals. Hattas Wilson has created murals for past Showcase houses, but this is the first time she gets her own space.
The Empty House Party will be followed by the tour opening on April 19.
“It’s a very unique little historical gem with an incredibly interesting history, as well as amazing design potential and challenges too,” Bengtson said.
Tickets are available at pasadenashowcase.org/tickets or by calling 626-606-1600 Golden Tickets, providing on-demand access for public tours are on sale now. Timed entry tickets will be available in early February and cost $38-$58.