ATTACHMENT E

BANKAMERICARD PLAZA 101 S. Marengo Avenue Pasadena, CA

HISTORIC RESOURCES EVALUATION

Prepared for:

Rising Realty 523 W. 6th St., #600 Los Angeles, CA 90014

Prepared by:

November 10, 2015 BANKAMERICARD CENTER, 101 S MARENGO AVE, PASADENA NOVEMBER 10, 2015 HISTORIC RESOURCES EVALUATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 2 1.1 Methodology ...... 2 1.2 Results of Study ...... 2 2. PRIOR EVALUATIONS ...... 3 3. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION ...... 6 4. HISTORIC CONTEXTS ...... 10 4.1 Background: Development of BankAmericard Center ...... 10 4.2 Edward Durell Stone ...... 11 4.3 Redevelopment and Corporate Headquarters in Pasadena ...... 14 4.4 BankAmericard and the Modern Credit Card Market ...... 16 4.5 Architectural and Landscape Design Context ...... 21 5. REGULATIONS AND CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION ...... 25 5.1 National Register of Historic Places ...... 25 5.2 California Register of Historical Resources ...... 26 5.3 City of Pasadena Criteria for Designation of Historic Resources ...... 26 6. EVALUATION OF SIGNIFICANCE ...... 28 6.1 National Register of Historic Places ...... 28 6.2 California Register of Historical Resources ...... 28 6.3 City of Pasadena Designation of Historic Resources ...... 30 7. FINDINGS ...... 31 8. RESOURCES ...... 31 8.1 Publications and Reports ...... 31 8.2 Archival and Newspaper Sources ...... 32

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BANKAMERICARD CENTER, 101 S MARENGO AVE, PASADENA NOVEMBER 10, 2015 HISTORIC RESOURCES EVALUATION

1. INTRODUCTION

Rising Realty Partners has requested this Historic Resources Evaluation to inform the potential purchase and future adaptive reuse of the office building at 101 S. Marengo Ave. in Pasadena. Completed in 1974, the building is a late work of the well‐known American Modernist architect Edward Durell Stone. As a part of due diligence for the purchase, Architectural Resources Group was asked to examine the potential historical significance of the property. While the property has not been fully evaluated in the past, it has been identified in surveys as potentially historically significant. The building’s provenance as the work of a well‐known architect and its large size in a prominent position in the Pasadena Civic Center has served to raise its profile.

1.1 Methodology

To complete this Historic Resources Evaluation (HRE), ARG performed the following tasks:  Made site visits to inspect and photograph the exterior and surroundings of the property.  Conducted local research at the Pasadena Public Library Centennial Room (special collections) and the Pasadena Museum of History, as well as extensive on‐line research in the Los Angeles Times.  Performed research specific to the building in the Edward Durell Stone Archives at the University of Arkansas, the main repository of Stone’s work.  Located and reviewed as‐built plans for the building.  Applied the criteria for evaluation of the National Register of Historic Places, California Register of Historical Resources, and City of Pasadena landmarks.  Identified the character‐defining features of the building.

This evaluation was prepared by Jennifer Trotoux, Associate (Project Manager), Evanne St. Charles, and Katie Horak, Principal (Principal in Charge). All are Architectural Historians and Historic Preservation Planners with ARG. The Project Manager has been with ARG for nine years and has nearly twenty years of experience in the evaluation of historic resources in Southern California. All meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualifications Standards in History and Architectural History.

1.2 Results of Study

As a result of the research and analysis that ARG undertook for this report, we found that the property is not eligible for designation as a historic resource under the criteria of the National Register or the California Register, or as a City of Pasadena Landmark. A detailed analysis of the historic contexts in which the building was considered and a discussion of the application of the criteria follows.

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2. PRIOR EVALUATIONS

Due to its unmistakable presence at the juncture of the Old Pasadena and Civic Center areas of Central Pasadena, the 1974 BankAmericard Center is a high‐profile building in Pasadena’s urban environment. It is also associated with a prominent architect, Edward Durell Stone. The building was a project of Pasadena’s Community Redevelopment Agency and completed at the time of a number of other corporate development projects that began to transform the commercial landscape of Pasadena during the early 1970s. As a result of this prominence, the building has been identified in local surveys of historic resources two times in the past decade despite its age of less than fifty years.

In 2004, the City of Pasadena enacted its Central District Specific Plan in order to “provide for systematic implementation of the General Plan, as related to the properties within the boundaries of the Central District Specific Plan area.” As part of the plan, a reconnaissance survey was conducted to identify potentially historic properties within the boundaries of the Central District. The subject property was included in a 2007 survey, and was given a status code of 7N, meaning that the property “needs to be reevaluated.”1 The preliminary evaluation, written at the time by a senior planning staff member, noted that the property should be considered in the contexts of the work of Edward Durell Stone, the Community Redevelopment Agency, and late‐modern corporate architecture. All three are addressed in this report.

In 2007, the City of Pasadena received a Certified Local Government (CLG) grant from the State Office of Historic Preservation (SHPO) to commission a Historic Context Report for the city’s Cultural Resources of the Recent Past. The report, completed by Historic Resources Group and Pasadena Heritage, identified Edward Durell Stone as one of the significant architects whose work from the study period, 1935‐1965, is found in Pasadena. BankAmericard Center was noted as one of these works, and described as “the first major success” of the City’s redevelopment efforts.

In 2011, Pasadena received another CLG grant for the Historic Designed Gardens of Pasadena project to undertake a Historic Context Statement, reconnaissance survey, and Multiple Property Documentation form. This project included the corporate plazas of Pasadena through 1975 within its purview, so the subject property was included. The reconnaissance survey gave the plaza (separate from the rest of the property) of the BankAmericard Center an evaluation code of 3S, a property that is individually eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Presumably, the fact that the plaza was known to be designed by a prominent firm, was characteristic of an identifiable period in Pasadena’s development history, and remains unaltered were enough to gain it the highest evaluation in the survey. It should be noted, however, that a reconnaissance survey, by its nature, leaves for the future the level of intensive evaluation that is necessary to understand a resource and its place in a community’s history.

1 RTKL Associates, Inc., Central District Specific Plan Appendix E: Survey of Historic Properties, prepared for the City of Pasadena Planning and Development Department, Nov. 2004.

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It is difficult to assess the plaza of an office building as a discrete resource. Since evaluating each potentially significant landscape in concert with any associated buildings was outside of the scope of the Historic Designed Gardens study, this condition had to be accepted in order for the identification of potentially significant resources to proceed. When the National Park Service (NPS) reviewed the Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) form that was produced along with the study, this flaw in the methodology (necessary though it was to completing the survey) impeded NPS acceptance of the MPD nomination.

Due to the evaluation of the survey by NPS, which was pending at the time, the City chose to require that the recent waterproofing improvements to the plaza adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. The project was completely successfully and rewarded with a 2014 Special Recognition Award for Historic Preservation by the city’s Historic Resources Commission.

The aim of the present evaluation is to provide further clarity on the eligibility of the BankAmericard Center as a potential historic resource through greater research and analysis.

Location Map: Property outlined above at the southwest corner of E. Green St. and S. Marengo Ave. Note proximity of Pasadena Civic Auditorium to the east, Paseo Colorado shopping center directly north of the Auditorium, and Pasadena City Hall to the north of the Paseo.

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Aerial View: Image shows roof penthouse/mechanical and plaza at right. (Image ©Historic Aerials, 2004)

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3. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The BankAmericard Center is located at 101 S. Marengo Ave. on a three‐acre site in the central district of Pasadena. It stands at the southwest end of the Civic Center Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The property is buffered from the historic buildings in the District, however, by the Pasadena Center (the convention center) which occupies the properties to the east and west of the Civic Auditorium. The subject property is bounded by E. Green St. to the north, S. Marengo Ave. (the primary façade) to the east, Arroyo Parkway to the west, and a neighboring office building property to the south. The site slopes downward from east to west, so that the plaza is located at grade on the Marengo Ave. (east) side, with the plaza level cantilevered over the lower‐grade Arroyo Parkway (west) side.

The building is surrounded on all sides by a hardscaped plaza paved in a rectilinear pattern demarcated by a grid of bands of concrete lined in brown brick, defining square panels of concrete with an exposed aggregate surface. A concrete planter wall with a rough stucco finish, approximately four feet in height, lines the perimeter of the north, south, and west sides of the plaza and is planted with Crepe Myrtle trees.

The paved plaza is widest along S. Marengo Ave., fronting the primary (east) façade the building (see aerial view, prior page). A large, circular fountain is the focal point of the east plaza. The center of the fountain is clad in brown, matte finish square tile and is surrounded by a scalloped mass of concrete, slightly elevated on a tile‐clad base. Round concrete planters are placed in the concave/recessed sections around the fountain, and projecting sections of concrete serve as seating. Three flag poles punctuate the sidewalk edge in front of the fountain. On either side of the fountain is a square grid of twelve four‐foot‐high, stuccoed planters holding young magnolia trees. A grouping of four square benches is clustered at the center of each planter grid, consisting of four trapezoidal‐shaped concrete panels extending from a rectangular pillar of concrete and wedged together to form a seat. Additional new moveable benches, lunch tables, and trash cans, along with new light stanchions, are concentrated in the north and south ends of the main front plaza.

The rear and side sections of plaza are narrower than the front plaza. Circular concrete planters along with new benches, lunch tables, and trash cans are situated in the paved grid pattern of the north plaza area. The south and west plaza sections, still narrower than the north plaza, are paved in the same manner as the rest of the plaza and are largely void of seating or other features.

A series of concrete steps are located at the northwest corner of the plaza and lead down to the street level at E. Green St. and Arroyo Parkway. Two vehicular entrances to the parking garages are located at street level along E. Green St. Planters level with the sidewalk span the length of the site along E. Green St. and contain rose bushes and podocarpus trees. Along the west side of the site, on grade at Arroyo Parkway, is the former access to the drive‐up teller stations. A chain link fence sheathed with green fabric currently encloses the space. At the south end of the Arroyo Parkway side is a large vehicular entry to below‐grade parking. Planters bounded by concrete curbs span the length of the west side and contain raphiolepis shrubs in the center and several oriental magnolia trees underplanted with mondo grass further to the south. The lower

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portion of the building wall at the planter is covered in creeping ficus, which is trimmed tight to the wall to a height of about four feet. Some of this plant material may reflect the original planting plan, while that on the Green St. side and the corner of Marengo Ave. and Green St. appears to be more recent choices.

The BankAmericard Center is a massive, 360,000‐square‐foot five‐story office building designed in the Corporate International style. The main structure of the building is a windowless rectangular box with a flat roof. The building is almost entirely clad in rectangular panels of travertine set in alternating vertical and horizontal rows with corresponding veining. New Bank of America signage has been mounted to the travertine veneer at the upper left corners of the longer east and west elevations. The glass‐enclosed first floor of the building is recessed from the travertine mass above, which is carried on regularly‐spaced rectangular piers wrapped in vertically striated bronze‐anodized aluminum. Newer LED light fixtures are mounted to two sides of each of the pillars. The first floor/lobby level at all elevations is composed of solar bronze tinted floor‐to‐ceiling windows and fully‐glazed doors (there are a few pairs of solid replacement doors on the north and east elevations where exit stairs discharge onto the plaza). A metal handrail runs along the lower half of the first‐floor elevations, anchored to the window mullions.

The main entrance to the building is through two pairs of fully‐glazed aluminum doors at the north end of the east façade. The east and west façades at the first floor level are nearly identical, composed of a single plane of windows and doors, whereas the north and south façades project slightly outward near the center. The ground floor lobby spaces appear to have been reconfigured with no remaining original features or finishes. Circulation between floors is through elevators and escalators at the north end of the building, with exit stairs located in the center of each side of the building.

Character‐Defining Features

Most buildings, whether considered historic resources or not, have features that define their architectural character. A design as forceful as that of the BankAmericard Center is marked by its simplicity and coherence of form, materials, and color. The following are among the character‐defining features that define the building’s architectural character:

 Simple, monolithic massing.  Simplicity of a single sheathing material.  Differentiation of the open (glass) condition of the ground floor elevated over the closed (stone) condition of the upper façade.  Color scheme of light buff (travertine, concrete) and dark brown (bronze glass, bronze‐ anodized aluminum, brown brick (plaza paving), and brown tile (fountain).  Simple materials palette of travertine, concrete, tile/brick, and dark brown metal (window mullions, piers).  Rectilinear, somewhat rigid grid of the plaza set off by circular shapes of fountain and planters.

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BankAmericard Center, 101 S. Marengo Ave.

View of east (primary) and north elevations. View northeast of plaza, fountain, and planters with primary façade in the background.

View north of primary façade at plaza level set View from recessed plaza level out to fountain behind piers. and plaza.

Hand railing at exterior perimeter of plaza level. View west of planters at perimeter of south plaza.

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Freestanding planters with magnolia trees View west of the north plaza, original planters and flanking the fountain. new benches and lunch tables.

Cluster of four benches within ring of magnolia View west of stairs down to lower street level at trees, located north and south of fountain. E. Green and Arroyo Parkway.

View north of the west façade at street level. View east of the north façade at Green Street Curbed planters and recessed former drive‐up with later standpipe enclosure fence and planters teller area. Rear edge of plaza is cantilevered at sidewalk; cantilevered plaza level above. above.

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4. HISTORIC CONTEXTS

4.1 Background: Development of BankAmericard Center

BankAmericard Center was planned and designed beginning in 1971, with completion of construction occurring in 1974. Bank of America had a corporate presence in Pasadena already at the time of its construction, and the planning of this corporate center allowed the company to move their credit card operations to a larger facility that would serve them for the long term.

In June of 1971, John Hill wrote a memorandum to Edward Durell Stone informing him of the progress of the commission. Bank of America’s Continental Services had apparently set forth much of their program needs (and the form they would take) for Edward Durell Stone, Inc. (this branch of the firm had offices in Palo Alto and Los Angeles; the latter address appears on the plans). Hill had met with the builder, the City, and Bank of America (Continental Services) and had this to report to his boss:

Continental Services had developed their own plan in great detail, largely disregarding ours. They took only half the site, added a bank, and put a no window fortress‐like credit card unit above.2

The firm would be expected to start the design for the building in August, with a period of six months to develop the design while the site was being cleared. These comments indicate that the windowless character of the upper façades and other aspects of the site planning were a product of the Bank’s architects, not of Edward Durell Stone, Inc.

The project and concept drawings were approved by the CRA in December, 1971. The Star News noted: “In keeping with the general plan to beautify the downtown area initial designs of the huge building reflect total subterranean parking while the street level area will be built as a park surrounding the bank.”3 Architectural and structural sets for the building, as well as as‐built drawings, were located at the property and consulted for this report. These drawings were produced by Edward Durell Stone, Inc. and are signed by the project architect, John F. Adams, whose participation as the face of the Stone office on the project is also documented in many newspaper articles.

According to 1973 plans in the Edward Durell Stone archives, the interiors of the main floor (plaza level) were designed by a local Pasadena firm, R. Nilsen Architects and Planners. Any connection to the landscape architecture firm of Edward Durell Stone Associates (EDSA) has not been documented, but is certainly possible given that the two firms commonly collaborated.

BankAmericard began the transfer of offices to the new facility in February of 1974. A team of 1,000 employees filled the new building, which was said by the Vice President and Manager, Ted Wooten, to “(give) us all the room we need” and “(accommodate) more sophisticated

2 John Hill to Edward Durell Stone, memorandum dated 18 June 1971. Edward Durell Stone archives. 3 John McAlister, “$20 Million B of A Center Approved,” Pasadena Star News, 2 Dec 1971.

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equipment and a more scientific arrangement of operational functions.”4 An earlier manager had noted that “the new facility’s horizontal space area will enable us to fully reach our future growth potential.”5

4.2 Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1902, the youngest of four children. Stone’s mother recognized his creative talents at an early age and encouraged his projects by dedicating a room in the house as his workshop.6 Though Stone excelled in the creative subjects, academics proved difficult for him. Between 1921 and 1922, Stone attend the University of Arkansas’s College of Arts and Sciences, where he struggled with all courses excluding Elementary Freehand Drawing.7 In 1923, Edward left the University of Arkansas and moved to Boston, where his brother, James Hicks Stone, a practicing architect at the time, was able to secure an entry‐level job for him at the architecture firm Strickland, Blodgett & Law. While at the firm, Edward attended evening classes at the Boston Architectural Club. There, he studied the classical orders and perfected his technical drawing skills.

In 1924, Henry Shepley, president of the Boston Architectural Club, invited Stone to join his firm Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott as a draftsman. At Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott, Stone worked on a number of projects designed in the Beaux‐Arts tradition, including a dormitory at Harvard University, the Washington Building in Washington, D.C., and the Fabyan Building in Boston.

In 1925, with Shepley’s support, Stone entered Harvard’s Graduate School of Design as a candidate for a certificate of accomplishment (as opposed to a degree). Though he excelled in his design classes, and was considered among the most talented of his peers, Stone was far from proficient in his technical construction courses. After failing a class in the theory of building construction, Stone left Harvard and applied to MIT as a Special Student in Architecture, which excused him from having to study engineering.8

Upon winning a design competition for the Rotch Travelling Scholarship, Stone trekked across Europe, studying a range of architectural works, from ancient Roman ruins to the International style‐buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. Stone spent two years travelling, sketching, and drawing before returning to the United States in 1929. Soon after his return, he was hired by Leonard Schultze, who he had met in Stockholm a year before, to work on the design of the Waldorf‐Astoria Hotel (1931) in New York City.9 In his designs for the Waldorf, Stone expertly combined “traditional ornament with a reductivist modern aesthetic,” a method

4 “BankAmericard HQ Starts Marengo Move,” Pasadena Star News, 3 Feb 1974. 5 Brent Howell, “BankAmericard Center Groundbreaking Held,” Pasadena Star News, 4 Nov 1972, 3. 6 Hicks Stone, Edward Durell Stone: A Son’s Untold Story of a Legendary Architect (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2011), 11‐15. 7 Mary Anne Hunting, Edward Durell Stone: Modernism’s Populist Architect (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 20. 8 Hunting, 21‐22. 9 Hunting, 24‐25.

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he continued to apply throughout his career.10 His work was so well received that he was invited to join a group of three firms, collectively known as the Associated Architects, to work on the design of the Rockefeller Center (1932).11 Stone served as chief designer of the Center’s 3,600‐ seat theater and Radio City Music Hall, both of which received highly decorative interiors and Moderne‐style exteriors. Stone’s early success would surely have continued, had it not been for his acceptance of a commission to work on a vacation lodge with the firm N.W. Hutchings & Sons, which led to his dismissal from Associated Architects in 1932.12

While Stone struggled, to some degree, to obtain commissions after being let go from Associated Architects, it was during this time that he began to experiment with more modern styles and treatments. Influenced by European architects Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as the Modern Architecture International Exhibition in 1932, Stone began to create International Style designs, most notably single‐family residences such as the Richard H. Mandel house. Upon its completion in 1935, the Mandel house received great acclaim for its modern features, including its lack of applied ornamentation, contrasting horizontal lines and single curved volume, and the exterior form as an expression of the interior floor plan. The Mandel house was viewed by many as an American take on the International Style, blending the machine age aesthetic with a heightened sense of expression. By 1940, it had been featured in more than 15 publications, including journals, magazines and newspaper articles.13 Stone continued to design International Style‐houses through the 1930s, including the Albert Carl Koch house (1938) and the Conger Goodyear house (1938), which were both exhibited in multiple publications and received design awards. In 1936, Stone was commissioned to collaborate with architect Philip Goodwin for the design of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The building, touted “America’s first great modern museum” by the Magazine of Art, became one of Stone’s most acclaimed works and put him at the forefront of the Modernism movement in America.14

During World War II, Stone was hired by the U.S. Air Force as chief of the planning and design section of the engineering and development branch of the Air Installations Division. Between 1942 and 1945, he helped to design the layout of airfields and the creation of new building typologies such as air depots, operations hangars, and control towers. Stone played a role in the development of master plans for permanent airfields including the $10 million headquarters for the Continental Air Force at Andrew Field in Maryland, and the $30 million Fairfield‐Suisun Army Air Base (renamed the Travis Air Force Base) in California.15

In the years following the war, Stone, who now had a practice of his own (Edward Durell Stone & Associates), designed a number of promotional houses, published in magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Life. These house designs typically exhibited modern features, including open floor plans and floor‐to‐ceiling windows in combination with natural materials such as brick, stone, and solid lumber, in part due to the influence of and newly‐formed friendship with acclaimed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. While Stone’s designs

10 Hicks Stone, 37. 11 Hicks Stone, 37. 12 Hunting, 24‐25. 13 Hunting, 26‐29. 14 Hunting, 47. 15 Hunting, 57.

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were considered modern, he aimed to appeal to the masses and create buildings that would retain their attractiveness over time.16

In the early 1950s, Stone was selected by a board of architects appointed by the State Department to design the United States Embassy in India. The board requested a design that would “give serious study to local conditions of climate and site,” through the application of new techniques and materials.17 Under this direction, Stone employed a number of climate control techniques, including a terrazzo grille that functioned both as ornamentation as well as a method to reduce glare, an extensive canopy that shaded the building, and a water garden to provide a cooling effect.18 The building, completed in 1959 and praised by many, was awarded the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor in 1961. However, despite its widespread acclaim, the building was scoffed at by modernists for its classically‐derived plan and features, its use of opulent materials such as marble and bronze, and its overly decorative façade treatment. The Embassy building marked the beginning of a long, tumultuous relationship between Stone and his modernist critics who would continue to denounce his increasingly classically‐inspired, “new romanticist” designs for decades to come.

In 1954, Stone was commissioned to design the new facilities for the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. The contract with Stanford required that he establish an office in Palo Alto, which proved to be problematic from the beginning. Stone, unwilling to relinquish some of his hold on the company and establish a partner, travelled biweekly between the New York and California offices, which was quite demanding during a time when air travel and long distance calls were, at best, unreliable. A year after the project had commenced, Stone sent longtime associate Lloyd Flood to the Palo Alto office to direct the planning of the medical center. Flood, a skilled planner, provided much needed leadership to the design team.19 The Stone design, which again employed classical planning principles and an extensive use of patterned screens and water features, was well received by the public. After the completion of the Stanford University Medical Center, Stone hardly ever travelled to the Palo Alto office, let alone its satellite office in Los Angeles.

Through the mid‐1950s and 1960s, Stone’s New York and California offices received a variety of notable commissions, including the United States Pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1958‐1971) in Washington, D.C., the Perpetual Savings and Loan Association Headquarters (1960‐1962) in Beverly Hills, and the General Motors Building (1963‐1968) in New York City. Stone’s formal, classically‐derived designs were particularly attuned to the creation of such monumental corporate and institutional structures. By the late 1960s, however, Stone’s popularity had begun to wane as the firm struggled to produce new ideas and innovative works. This is evident in the design of the Florida State Capitol (1969‐1978), where the firm essentially replicated buildings Stone had designed for other projects years before. The general public, and even more so, the architectural community, had become weary of Stone’s “repeated recycling of bright white

16 Hunting, 58‐59. 17 Edward Durell Stone, The Evolution of an Architect (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), 138. 18 Edward Durell Stone, 138. 19 Hicks Stone, 160‐162.

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cladding, stripped classical forms, ornamental patterning, and the palettes of luxurious materials and fiery red interiors.”20

With his diminishing health in the late 1960s and ‘70s, Stone’s role in the firm had become increasingly irrelevant. Often not able to recall the names of individuals or the specifics of a project, clients began to look to the younger architects in the office. In a letter to the principals in 1970, Stone expressed his frustration with the firm and its inability to create quality design.21 In 1971, the partners voted to form a committee tasked with improving the design of the office, but also creating a more contemporary aesthetic, different from the one that Stone had cultivated in the previous decades. Stone formally resigned from the firm in 1974. On August 6, 1978, Edward Durell Stone died at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.22

The literature and scholarship on the Stone firm has developed to a level where the span of the firm’s work can be evaluated for its place in 20th century architectural history. More architecturally significant works by Stone are present in Pasadena. These are the National Register‐listed Stuart Pharmaceuticals building (1958) and Beckman Auditorium on the campus of the California Institute of Technology (1965). BankAmericard Center is not present in the literature on Stone, unlike these other two local properties that have been published in many instances as examples of his work.

4.3 Redevelopment and Corporate Headquarters in Pasadena

Pasadena’s history is marked by periods of growth and transformation that remade the City throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Founded as an agricultural colony by what were essentially gentlemen farmers from Indiana, the city was incorporated in 1888 as it was transforming into a magnet for wealthy retirees and others who came in their wake. In the late 19th century, Pasadena’s per‐capita income was said to be the highest of any city in the nation. Known mainly as a winter haven from the harsher weather of the Midwest and New England through the turn of the 20th century, Pasadena would become a year‐round city with a greater sense of a working civic identity as the 1920s began. The economy and culture of the city became less dependent on the major resort hotels that had dominated its landscape, several of which closed in the 1920s and 1930s. The major transformation of that period was ushered in by the establishment of the Pasadena Planning Commission in 1921 and the subsequent hiring of Edward Bennett of Chicago, one of the nation’s foremost city planners, to plan for the future growth of the city. Bennett is known locally as the originator of the Pasadena Civic Center, the most notable monuments of which are the City Hall, Public Library, and Civic Auditorium. Bennett’s Plan for the City of Pasadena, California was built on prior planning efforts dating back to 1915, but the changes that came about in the 1920s would visibly set the stage for the future growth of the city.

Through the effects of the Great Depression and World War II, Pasadena’s image as well as its economic base and demographics had changed as its building stock aged. The city struggled

20 Hicks Stone, 281. 21 Hicks Stone, 290‐294. 22 Hicks Stone, 299.

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throughout the 1940s and 1950s to the point where, in 1959, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce moved to commission a report on the economic conditions of Pasadena.23 At the first public discussion of the report, it was noted that it would address the city’s “westside problem,” as economic energy was drained off of the older center of town by the pull of new development to the east. Two of the challenges noted to Pasadena’s future economic success were a lack of available land and the “growing obsolescence in certain residential and commercial areas.”24

One of the recommendations of the plan was the establishment of a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)25, which was later to support the construction of the BankAmericard Center. While the shortage of land was cited as an impediment to development, aerial photographs of the central city in the early 1950s through the early 1960s show that many older buildings had already been demolished, leaving their sites for temporary use as parking lots – including most the BankAmericard site and the future convention center (Pasadena Center) sites flanking the Civic Auditorium in the neighboring block of Green St.

The Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy article in 1971 on Pasadena’s efforts to maintain its prestige in the 1970s. The president of the Chamber of Commerce was quoted as saying, “There is no doubt about it… Pasadena is changing. The little old lady with tennis shoes image is being replaced by a more dynamic aspect. A new image is emerging as that of a headquarters city and everything the city and the chamber are doing is directed toward that image.”26

Due to the presence of Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena was already a magnet for technology companies. The retention and attraction of corporate headquarters in the city became a priority (as a part of the “Pasadena Standard,” an effort to promote the growth of non‐polluting industries in the city27). The current stock of office buildings was not up to the challenge of accommodating these expanding companies, and new buildings would be needed in the near future.

A number of comparable office building complexes were completed in Pasadena in the period 1965‐1975. These projects occupied very large, consolidated parcels and depended on the encouragement of civic leaders and, in the case of Parsons and BankAmericard, the mechanisms available to the CRA. All feature front plazas to set off the buildings and provide a plaza as open space to offset the bulk or height of the office tower.

1965 Union Bank 251 S. Lake at William Pereira 323,000 sf Cordova 1975 Parsons Engineering 100 W. Walnut St. Charles Luckman 475,000 sf (at Fair Oaks) (first phase)

23 Ann Scheid Lund, Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History (San Antonio: Historical Publishing Network, 1999), 87. 24 “Economic Survey to Top Annual Chamber Banquet” Independent Star‐News, 31 May 1959, 28. 25 Through the same period, the Los Angeles Times refers to the “Pasadena Redevelopment Agency,” or PRA, rather than CRA, possibly to distinguish it from the Los Angeles CRA. 26 Bert Mann, “Pasadena Struggling to Retain its Crown in the 1970s,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug 1971, SG1. 27 Scheid Lund, 88.

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1974 Pacific Telephone 177 E. Colorado (at Not known 292,000 sf Marengo) (landscape possibly by Howard Troller) 1974 BankAmericard 101 S. Marengo Ave. Edward Durell Stone, 360,000 sf Inc.

These additional, non‐office projects round out the list of the CRA’s major commercial projects in Pasadena: 1971 Sheraton Hotel Civic Center/Cordova St. Not known 1973 Pasadena (Convention) Civic Center/Green St. John Carl Warnecke Center 1980 Plaza Pasadena Colorado Blvd. from Charles Kober Assoc. Marengo to Los Robles

Without the change that these projects represent, Pasadena may have become a very different city. While the presence of these companies and businesses undoubtedly had an effect on Pasadena, and allowed it to “retain its crown in the 1970s” and beyond, as the Los Angeles Times noted in 1972, it may be that the projects were an economic success despite the urban form of the development associated with them, not because of it.

After this period, large‐scale urban renewal projects (whether accomplished with private or with public funding) quickly fell out of favor. The Federal government’s funding of Urban Renewal, for example, ended in 1974. It should also be noted that Parsons Engineering, Pacific Telephone, the Plaza Pasadena, and the Pasadena Center (i.e., most of the projects listed above) have undergone major redesign efforts that have been aimed at reintegrating them with the urban patterns of Pasadena. They did not become a model for future development.

4.4 BankAmericard and the Modern Credit Card Market

According to Bank of America’s own corporate history, the BankAmericard program was introduced in 1958 during a period when post‐war expansion of the economy demanded “a new kind of credit card program to cater to society’s increased mobility and demand for greater convenience in purchasing power.”28 While credit accounts with single retailers had a much longer history, credit cards as we know them today were initiated in 1951 with the issuance of Diners Club cards for use in restaurants. The BankAmericard, on the other hand, was touted as a “general use” alternative to the prior generation of credit cards, which necessitated consumers to have multiple cards for various types of purchases: e.g., different cards for purchasing gas, meals, or entertainment. It was also the first card that did not require payment in full at the end of the month, but allowed consumers to carry a balance that they would pay off over time. Bank of America states that by 1960, within two years, there were one million of the cards in circulation. In 1966, Bank of America began licensing the cards to other banks around the country.

28 “Introducing the Modern Credit Card,” Web, Accessed 3 Nov 2015.

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Bank of America notes that 100 million such cards were circulating by 1970, a ten‐fold increase in ten years. In 1970, all of the banks that issued cards under BankAmericard formed a marketing association which eventually became known as Visa.29

With this rapid growth, facilities were needed to administer the credit card program. BankAmericard’s regional office was already located in Pasadena, where 750 employees occupied five floors of an office building that Bank of America had purchased in 1958. Once the company had outgrown these quarters, the City of Pasadena had a heavy interest in retaining the BankAmericard presence in Pasadena and were willing to support their expansion.

In November of 1971, The City of Pasadena and BankAmericard came to a mutually beneficial arrangement: the City would retain a major corporate employer, and the bank would gain a suitably large and prominent headquarters building through one million dollars in bonds to be issued by the Community Redevelopment Agency (for acquisition and clearance of the land).30 The third party in the arrangement was developer McCaslin‐Lloyd Investment Co., who would construct and own the $20,000,000 completed property, leasing it long‐term to Bank of America. Edward Durell Stone, Inc. of Los Angeles was identified as the architect.

With public money involved, the CRA director “said the agency will place strict restrictions on the use and development of the site to insure a facility of outstanding quality and design.” The building was anticipated by the City to generate an extra $660,000 in annual property tax revenue31 beyond the property’s current $33,000.32 Other public benefits were touted with the existing BankAmericard Center’s 25% rate of employment of racial minorities, as well as the expectation that the development would “significantly add to the revitalization of downtown Pasadena.”33 Pasadena’s BankAmericard Center was a significant local employer, and was the largest of the 86 BankAmericard Centers worldwide; 73 of those were located in the United

29 “Introducing the Modern Credit Card.”

30 Jane Hardy, “Pasadena Picked as Bank HQ; City to House BankAmericard,” Pasadena Star News, 9 Nov 1971; “Bank Will Assume Site Acquisition Note,” Los Angeles Times, 19 Nov 1971, SG7. 31 Hardy, 9 Nov 1971. 32 Jack Birkinshaw, “Bank of America Announces Plans for $20 Million Pasadena Building,” Los Angeles Times, 1971. 33 Hardy, 9 Nov 1971.

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States. The Pasadena center serviced a large area of Southern California, from Bishop to the Mexican border.

The bank was to spend $316,000 on “fine arts and landscaping.” While the plaza is a major feature of the building, nothing that could be described as public art is present on the exterior of the building. Curiously, the massive building is also underbuilt for its site: the property was apparently zoned to allow up to 700,000 square feet, twice the size of the building that was constructed.34

An article in the Star News in March of 1974 described the operations of the new BankAmericard Center. The horizontal design of the floor plates, at 60,000 square feet per floor, was said to speed the efficiency of its operations. The building featured “all new furniture in a variety of colors,” “all office and public areas … decorated with colorful modernistic graphics,” a 350‐seat cafeteria on the top floor, and a 525‐car parking garage and service areas below the plaza.35 Drive‐up tellers were located on the lower‐grade Arroyo Parkway side. The ground floor housed lobbies and a branch bank with 21 teller stations, with BankAmericard operations filling out the four‐story block above. Edward Durell Stone, Inc. of Los Angeles was credited as the architect.

BankAmericard Center under construction, view north on Arroyo Parkway, probably late 1973. Image from the Edward Durell Stone archives job files, University of Arkansas. The nearly completed Pacific Telephone building at Colorado Blvd. is seen at left.

34 Jack Birkinshaw, “Bank of America Announces Plans for $20 Million Pasadena Building,” 1971, date unknown (Job files, Edward Durell Stone archives). 35 “A Home for Today and Tomorrow,” Pasadena Star News, 31 March 1974.

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View south of the BankAmericard Center’s Marengo Ave. plaza shortly after the building’s completion. The City streetlight standards seen along Marengo (left) and Green St. (foreground, right) are not extant (or may have been adapted to the cobra‐head fixtures seen today).

The BankAmericard facility was threatened with closure in 1991. While some jobs were transferred to the BankAmericard facility in San Francisco, Bank of America worked (while under pressure from the City and criticism from the Pasadena Weekly, a local alternative paper) to stem the tide of jobs leaving Pasadena. In May of 1991, they agreed to move 400 to 500 jobs of a Bank of America “satellite office” to the building, which would replace approximately one‐ third of the planned losses in the building’s BankAmericard work force.

The State of California had become the leading location of credit card industry jobs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The 1,300 BankAmericard jobs in Pasadena were a small part of the 21,000 credit card‐related jobs in the state, many of which were considered threatened by some analysts due to the increasingly onerous regulatory environment in the state and compensatory deregulation efforts in Arizona and Colorado.36

36 Robert Cooter, “Keep the Credit Card Jobs Still Left in California,” Pasadena Star News, 25 May 1993, A8.

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Interior views of the BankAmericard Center published in the Star News, March 31, 1974.

The history of the credit card industry in California is well represented by the subject property. In addition to being the largest center of operations for the pioneering company in the credit card industry, the design of the building was driven by the needs of the industry and BankAmericard’s specifications for how they could best run their operations. The most important characteristics of this are the horizontal arrangement of the floor space, with massive 40,000 square foot floor plates, and the windowless character of the box. These aspects of the design were not conceived by Edward Durell Stone, Inc., but by their client. It is not clear what the lack of windows contributed to the function of the building aside from a perception of increased security, but it should be noted that security questions do not appear to have been a major concern until later, when the industry had matured to the point where it became a target of fraud.

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The interiors appear to have been altered over time as the needs of Bank of America changed. The cafeteria, originally located on the 5th floor, was relocated to the ground (plaza) floor, where there are ample windows to let in daylight. The lobby remains in its original location at the northeast corner of the building, but it does not appear to retain any original features or finishes and may have been reduced in size. It is not clear that credit card operations of the 1970s are a significant context in the first place, and the current configuration of the interiors appears to have little to impart in any case. The building’s architectural presence lies more in its exterior and plaza.

4.5 Architectural and Landscape Design Context

The building is best understood as an example of Late Modern or Corporate International Style architecture. These styles emerged in the postwar period and dominated the designs of large commercial buildings and corporate headquarters through the 1970s. Derived from the principles of the earlier International Style, Corporate International Style architecture is characterized by large, simple masses with rectilinear volumes, flat roofs, smooth wall surfaces, and lack of applied ornamentation. Corporate International Style buildings are often very visually prominent, featured along major commercial corridors (in Los Angeles, Wilshire Blvd. would be the best example of such a setting). Due to the type of development that was often practiced in the 1960s and 1970s, consolidating smaller lots to produce a much larger building site, such buildings often occupy the full span of a block.

The BankAmericard Center adheres clearly to this type of development, which often took place with the assistance of local redevelopment agencies that were established in many California cities in the 1950s and 1960s.

Essential character‐defining features of Late Modern and Corporate International Style architecture include:

 Rectilinear, box‐shaped form  Concrete and steel construction with glass, concrete, or occasionally partial stone facing  Flat roofs with parapets or cantilevered slabs  Horizontal bands of windows or glass curtain walls  Articulated first floor/lobby level, often double‐height and set behind columns or pilotis  Integrated parking, either subterranean or above grade  Landscaped plaza in the setback from the street and/or integral plantings at ground floor

The subject property is characteristic of this style of architecture, but it has not been recognized as an important example. Despite the growing recognition of the architecture of this period, the literature is still not developed to the point where the building’s contribution might be evident. However, given that it is not an important example of Edward Durell Stone’s work, as discussed above at the beginning of Sect. 4, it follows that it is also not a notable example of the style. While the design of the building – including the massive scale and arguably transcendent nature of the clean, white stone box that makes up the bulk of the building ‐‐ can be said to possess the

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courage of its convictions, the property does not seem to reward deeper exploration. Both its historical and formal contributions are fairly inert.

The BankAmericard Center’s two most identifiable features are the monolithic stone box of its upper floors and its landscaped plaza fronting on Marengo Ave. As noted under Prior Evaluations, above, the plaza was identified as individually eligible for the National Register as a part of the survey for the Historic Designed Gardens Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) form. Upon our own review of the plaza, ARG finds it difficult to concur with that evaluation. The text of the MPD regarding this context is worth quoting in its entirety for reference and discussion:

The low‐rise “Main Street” character of downtown Pasadena experienced a rapid transformation during the 1970s as new construction and the adoption of a Downtown Redevelopment Project Area in 1970 created perceptible shifts in massing and height, and increased traffic congestion in the downtown area. Typically incorporating a street‐ level plaza, several new large‐scale projects were built in downtown in rapid succession: the eight‐story Hilton Hotel (1971), located near the Civic Center; Pasadena Convention Center (1973); Bank Americard Center (1975); and the Pacific Telephone Building (1975) [both actually completed in 1974]. The public plaza was a design solution that provided opportunities to soften the effect of new construction and, in some cases, to reference Pasadena’s historic core. In response to the sudden introduction of new high‐rise construction in downtown, the city established a High‐Rise Task Force to address the impacts of vertical development. The Task Force recommended the creation of an urban design plan to manage rapid growth and explore measures such as height limits and the demarcation of areas specifically for the construction of high‐rises and new residential development. Using historic proportions of local Pasadena area property types, such as the bungalow court, the task force formulated guidelines for open space and setbacks in the downtown area. However, the creation of the task force and other efforts to manage growth in downtown did little to curb the effects of the development boom years of the 1970s and 1980s.37

The following is provided in the MPD for historic context and registration requirements:

To be eligible for the National Register under Criterion C, the garden should exhibit character‐defining features of Modern gardens from the period of significance and retain integrity of location, design, setting (if associated with a particular building), materials, workmanship, and association. The garden must demonstrate a clear linkage with its original installation dating from 1945 to 1975 and continue to retain essential character‐defining features and distinctive characteristics of its period and method of construction. The accumulated loss of character‐defining features, such as original design details, key materials, or examples of workmanship will result in a loss of integrity. Alterations, such as replaced vegetation, design additions, or moved elements, may be acceptable as a reflection of the property’s evolution if they are sensitive to its

37 Marlise Fratinardo, et al., National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, “Historic Designed Gardens of Pasadena,” 16 July 2012. A short paragraph on the inception of the 210 Freeway is omitted here for brevity.

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original characteristics and leave the overall design discernible and intact. The continuity of the garden’s historic design and its ability to convey its historical association with the Mid‐Century Modern style during the period of significance should be considered. Properties that date from the last 50 years must possess exceptional significance, as defined in Criteria Consideration G of the National Register.

The plaza does indeed maintain a very high level of historic integrity in all aspects defined for the National Register guidelines: location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, association, and historic feeling.38 It may be that for the survey team, its presence as a solid period piece by a known designer was enough to merit the evaluation of 3S. However, we find the following in reviewing the MPD study’s findings:

1) The MPD contains no discussion of what characterizes a significant or notable corporate office plaza. Residential and institutional gardens, which are better documented in the MPD, are different resource types than corporate office plazas. Correspondingly, the plaza cannot really be called “Mid‐Century Modern” in style, as it is described in the rest of the document. The design is better associated with Late Modern corporate styles. 2) The High‐Rise Task force is noted as an important factor in defining this type of development, but this property, so out of scale with the buildings in its surroundings (those prior to the other surrounding redevelopment projects, in any case), cannot be said to reflect the High‐Rise Task Force’s references to “historic proportions of local Pasadena area property types, such as the bungalow court.” 3) No argument is made that the plaza, then thirty‐eight years old, is exceptionally significant. The registration requirements state that a property less than fifty years old must meet the requirements of Criteria Consideration G, and the plaza does not appear to meet this threshold. A more appropriate assessment under the study’s own criteria may have been 7N, which was the status code given to the property as a whole in the 2004 survey and to the Pacific Telephone plaza of the same year (1974) in the survey for the MPD. Neither this plaza or its type, style, or historic context was sufficiently explored to make the determination of 3S. 4) It has not been verified that Edward Durell Stone Jr., sometimes identified as the landscape architect of this plaza, was involved in its design. Stone Jr. is noted among the designers profiled in the MPD form, but the particular projects that he may have designed locally are not named. More information on the attribution follows.

The plaza may well be a work of Edward Durell Stone Jr., but ARG did not uncover any evidence regarding the provenance of its design in the architectural or structural sets discovered at the building, the Edward Durell Stone Archives at the University of Arkansas, or in the more than four dozen newspaper articles that ARG read regarding the building and the context of its development. ARG also contacted the Fort Lauderdale office of Edward Durell Stone Associates (EDSA) to enquire about job lists or corporate memory from the 1970s that would provide confirmation. A biography of Stone Jr. and his firm EDSA notes that the firm was established in 1960. Its most critically noted commission was the landscape for the Pepsico World Headquarters in Purchase, NY. The plaza at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. and the

38 National Park Service, How to Complete the National Register Registration Form, Web, accessed 9 Nov 2015.

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Lincoln Center Plaza are two other well‐known collaborations between the firms headed by these two generations of designers.39 Aside from its prominent fountain, the BankAmericard plaza lacks the dynamism that the landscape components of these better‐known projects bring to the otherwise rectilinear architectural schemes that they are designed to complement.

Rendering of BankAmericard Center, possibly 1972. Edward Durell Stone archives, University of Arkansas.

The fountain, easily the most exciting feature of the design, appears in detail on the plans from the Edward Durell Stone, Inc. office (not EDSA). The details of the square planters for trees that punctuate the Plaza are shown on the same sheet. No planting plan has come to light. The rendering above from the Edward Durell Stone archives shows the mature growth of trees that was intended for the plaza of the building, but the planters (not pictured in the rendering) that were provided appear to be of insufficient size (6’‐6” outside dimension and only four feet deep) for such a canopy to develop. As noted, the fountain is the best distinguishing feature of the plaza.40 Otherwise, the rectilinear paving grid, built‐in square planters, and the low, round concrete planters (which were likely not designed expressly for the plaza, being of a type very common in the era) are the only features that define the plaza. The rectilinear clusters of seating to the north and south of the fountain are not spatially related to the fountain in a way that would encourage people to congregate around the main feature. The benches also appear not to be designed to encourage employees or passers‐by to linger and enjoy the plaza. These fairly sparse and uninteresting attempts at articulating the space do not appear to distinguish it from other buildings in the context or place it among the best examples of urban corporate landscape architecture from the 1970s.

For a full discussion of both the social and formal aspects of Modernist landscape plazas, refer to the various essays in the anthology, Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture: Making

39 Molly Phemister, “Biography of Edward Stone Jr,” web log post, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, 28 Sept 2009, web, accessed 5 Nov 2015. 40 Unattributed sketches in the Edward Durell Stone archives show elevations with some landscape features noted, but no specifics of plant species. This is the closet that ARG’s research came to revealing a landscape plan for the entire property.

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Postwar Landscapes Visible, Charles Birnbaum, ed. In short, the important themes of the type are not well represented at this property.

5. REGULATIONS AND CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION

5.1 National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places (National Register) is the nation's master inventory of known historic resources. The National Register is administered by the National Park Service (NPS) and includes listings of buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts that possess historic, architectural, engineering, archaeological, or cultural significance at the national, state or local level. The National Register criteria and associated definitions are outlined in National Register Bulletin Number 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.

There are four criteria under which a structure, site, building, district, or object can be considered significant and eligible for listing in the National Register. These include resources that are one or more of the following:

 Criterion A: are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history;

 Criterion B: are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past;

 Criterion C: embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction;

 Criterion D: have yielded or may likely yield information important in prehistory or history.

A resource can be considered significant in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, and culture. When nominating a resource to the National Register, one must evaluate and clearly state the significance of that resource. A resource can be individually eligible for listing on the National Register for any of the above four reasons; it can also be eligible as contributing to a group of resources (historic district) that are listed on the National Register.

To be listed in the National Register, a property must not only be significant under one of more of the four eligibility criteria, but it must also maintain a sufficient level of historic integrity to convey its significance. Properties less than 50 years of age must be of exceptional importance to be considered eligible for listing in the National Register.

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5.2 California Register of Historical Resources

The California Register of Historical Resources (California Register) is a listing of State of California resources that are significant within the context of California’s history. The California Register criteria are modeled after National Register criteria. However, the California Register focuses more closely on resources that have contributed to the development of California.

All resources listed in or formally determined (by the State Office of Historic Preservation) eligible for the National Register are automatically listed in the California Register. In addition, properties designated as historic landmarks under municipal or county ordinances are also eligible for listing in the California Register. The property must be significant at the local, state, or national level under one or more of the following criteria:

 Criterion 1: it is associated with events or patterns of events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history and cultural heritage of California or the United States.

 Criterion 2: it is associated with the lives of persons important to the nation or to California’s past.

 Criterion 3: it embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region, or method of construction, or represents the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values.

 Criterion 4: it has yielded, or has the potential to yield, information important to the prehistory or history of the state or the nation.

Like the National Register, for listing in the California Register a resource must be eligible under one or more of the four criteria and retain sufficient integrity to convey its significance.

5.3 City of Pasadena Criteria for Designation of Historic Resources

Historic Preservation in Pasadena is governed by Chapter 17.62 (Historic Preservation Ordinance) of the Pasadena Municipal Code. The criteria for the designation of historic monuments, landmarks, signs, trees, or districts are applied according to “applicable National Register of Historic Places Bulletins for evaluating historic properties,” including, but not limited to National Register Bulletin 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.41 The Criteria for the Designation of Historic Resources is outlined in 17.62.40 of the Pasadena Municipal Code.

Per 17.62.40(B) of the Municipal Code, a property merits consideration as a Historic Monument if it was previously designated as a historic treasure prior to the adoption of the 2005 Historic Preservation Ordinance, it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places at the State or

41 City of Pasadena Zoning Code, Chapter 17.62: Historic Preservation, accessed October 28, 2015.

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Federal level of significance, or it is significant at the regional, State, or Federal level and meets one or more of the following criteria:

 It is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of the history of the region, State, or nation.

 It is associated with the lives of persons who are significant in the history of the region, State, or nation.

 It is exceptional in the embodiment of the distinctive characteristics of a historic resource property type, period, architectural style, or method of construction, or that is an exceptional representation of the work of an architect, designer, engineer, or builder whose work is significant to the region, State, or nation, or that possesses high artistic values that are of regional, State‐wide or national significance.

 It has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history of the region, State, or nation.

According to 17.62.40(B), a historic monument designation “may include significant public or semi‐public interior spaces and features.”

Per 17.62.40(C) of the Municipal Code, a property merits consideration as a Landmark if it was previously designated as a landmark prior to the adoption of the 2005 Historic Preservation Ordinance, or it is of a local level of significance and meets one or more of the follow criteria:

 It is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of the history of the City, region, or State.

 It is associated with the lives of persons who are significant in the history of the City, region, or State.

 It embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, architectural style, period, or method of construction, or represents the work of an architect, designer, engineer, or builder whose work is of significance to the City or, to the region or possesses artistic values of significance to the City or to the region.

 It has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important locally in prehistory or history.

According to 17.62.40(C), a landmark may be “the best representation in the City of a type of historic resource or it may be one of several historic resources in the City that have common architectural attributes that represent a particular type of historic resource.”

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6. EVALUATION OF SIGNIFICANCE

6.1 National Register of Historic Places

National Register guidelines state that “fifty years is a general estimate of the time needed to develop historical perspective and to evaluate significance. This consideration guards against the listing of properties of passing contemporary interest and insures that the National Register is a list of truly historic places.”42 BankAmericard Center was completed forty‐one years ago, in 1974. Due to its age of less than fifty years, the property would have to meet the National Register criteria for evaluation and would also be required to demonstrate “exceptional importance” in order to be eligible for the National Register. ARG was unable to document that this is the case.

6.2 California Register of Historical Resources

Upon evaluation of 101 S. Marengo Ave. against the California Register criteria for evaluation, ARG finds that the property is not eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources.

Unlike the National Register, the California Register does not require “exceptional importance” for a property of less than fifty years of age to be eligible. It does require that the importance of the property, evidenced by its ability to meet the criteria for evaluation, be demonstrably met:

In order to understand the historic importance of a resource, sufficient time must have passed to obtain a scholarly perspective on the events or individuals associated with the resource. A resource less than fifty years old may be considered for listing in the California Register if it can be demonstrated that sufficient time has passed to understand its historical importance.43

Criterion 1: is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history.

Planning for the future development of Pasadena as a “headquarters city” began in the 1960s with the efforts of the Community Redevelopment Agency and the support of the Chamber of Commerce. BankAmericard Center is a significant presence in a portion of the City that remains heavily marked by the Redevelopment Agency projects that occurred here forty years ago. For a full discussion of the background and legacy of this type of development, please see the historic contexts above (Section 4.2).

42 National Park Service, National Register Bulletin 15, How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation, “Criteria Consideration G: Properties that Have Achieved Significance Within the Past Fifty Years.” (Washington DC: National Park Service, 1990; rev. 1991, 1995, 1997). 43 California Office of Historic Preservation, Technical Assistance Series #6, “California Register and National Register: A Comparison (for purposes of determining eligibility for the California Register),” web, accessed 9 Nov 2015.

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The recent Historic Resources Technical Report and final EIR for the so‐called Parsons Project, which will reconfigure the massive Parsons Engineering headquarters site at 100 W. Walnut Street, reached similar conclusions.44 The project was undeniably large and a force to be reckoned with in the cityscape, like BankAmericard Plaza. However, it was found that despite its association with a prolific architect, Charles Luckman, it was not architecturally significant (Criterion C/3). No pattern of events was identified that the project represents (Criterion A/1).

These projects were necessary to the economic vitality of the city, which has recovered in the decades since, and they are representative of a common approach to city planning in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The physical aspects of these projects – what they contributed to the urban fabric of the city – has been discredited both as an urban planning and an architectural model. Not all significant properties are widely loved, and challenging buildings and spaces certainly have a place in the ongoing conversation about the development and redevelopment of cities. However, other projects in this context have failed to be identified for their historical value. While this particular property has, appropriately, been called out a number of times for greater scrutiny, we have not found that its potential significance holds up today under fuller evaluation.

Therefore, the property is not associated with important patterns of history and is not significant under Criterion 1 of the California Register.

Criterion 2: is associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.

The building’s construction and design were impelled by the corporate needs of Bank of America in the context of the growth of their credit card business. There is no single person who emerges as a guiding force for the building’s development or for Bank of America’s pioneering expansion of universal (rather than retailer‐specific) credit accounts. Therefore, the BankAmericard Center is not associated with the life of a significant person important to the history of Pasadena, the region, or the nation and is not eligible under Criterion 2 of the California Register.

Criterion 3: embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.

The BankAmericard Center was completed in 1974, the same year Edward Durell Stone retired and only four years prior to his death. By the 1970s, Stone’s position in his firm had diminished, largely due to the decline in his health. Due to Stone’s lack of involvement in the California offices from the time they were established and, by the 1970s, in the firm as a whole, it is unlikely he played any part in the design of the BankAmericard Center. The project architect was John F. Adams of Edward Durell Stone, Inc. in California.

44 Historic Resources Group, “100 West Walnut Planned Development Historic Resources Technical Report,” June 2014. Appendix C to FEIR.

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BANKAMERICARD CENTER, 101 S MARENGO AVE, PASADENA NOVEMBER 10, 2015 HISTORIC RESOURCES EVALUATION

The building is not a significant example of the work of the Edward Durell Stone firm. During its construction, the firm experienced a series of financial setbacks as the economy suffered with high inflation rates and the 1973 oil embargo, which arguably affected its quality of design during this time period. Furthermore, the firm had struggled to produce any work of great substance since the mid‐1960s and was increasingly overlooked by clients seeking more contemporary, innovative designs.

The better buildings produced by Edward Durell Stone have been noted for the type of ornamental and material flair that was overlaid on the clear and basic forms of the buildings. In this case, neither the building itself nor the early drawings shows any such embellishment to temper the massive scale of the buildings and plaza. While smaller‐scale details, naturally, do occur in the design, they are limited: the striations in the bronze anodized aluminum of the column cladding, the repetition of brick borders in the paving of the plaza, and the way that the panels of travertine are set so that the floor plates can be discerned. These basic architectural gestures, however, do not equate to a level of architectural refinement or interest that would make for a distinguished building.

For these reasons, the subject property does not appear to be eligible under Criterion 3 of the California Register either as a work of Edward Durell Stone or as an excellent example of Corporate International Style or Late Modern architecture.

Criterion 4: has yielded or may likely yield information important in prehistory or history.

The BankAmericard Center was constructed between 1972 and 1974, involving the demolition of a few smaller existing buildings and a parking lot, and the regrading of the site in preparation for its development. Since the property had previously been graded and possesses no known archaeological resources, the likelihood of its ability to yield information important in prehistory or history is minimal. However, it should be noted that an archaeological assessment was not conducted as part of this study.

6.3 City of Pasadena Designation of Historic Resources

Historic Monument

The City of Pasadena’s Historic Monument category is the higher tier of designation at the local level. Properties ineligible for the California Register due to lack of significance are not likely to be considered eligible as Historic Monuments.

City of Pasadena Landmark

The City of Pasadena Landmark criteria mirror those of the National Register and California Register, and, according to the City’s zoning code, are to be applied according to the procedures and guidelines that apply for the National Register.45 Due to its ineligibility under the California Register, the property is also not eligible for local landmark designation. Please refer to the

45 City of Pasadena Zoning Code, Chapter 17.62.040, Criteria for Designation of Historic Resources.

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California Register eligibility discussion above for a thorough review of the local planning and architectural context that was applied.

7. FINDINGS

ARG has undertaken this study in order to fully evaluate the BankAmericard Center as a potential historic resource. By consulting all repositories that we were able to locate with information on the building, we addressed earlier questions about the historic significance of the design of the building and its plaza. We also examined the historic contexts and themes that were identified by earlier reviewers for further evaluation. Our findings our summarized here:

1) ARG finds that although the property is known to be the work of Edward Durell Stone, a significant architect, it belongs to a period in his work that an earlier City evaluator had described as “prosaic and unheralded,” an assessment which the literature on Stone bore out. Stone himself had little or no involvement in its design. We were also unable to find any connection to the work of Edward Durell Stone Associates, the well‐regarded landscape design firm of Stone’s son, who are thought by some to have designed the building’s plaza.

2) ARG finds that the property is not of sufficient architectural interest to justify significance for its formal qualities as an example of an architectural style or period.

3) ARG finds that the property represents the historic context of Community Redevelopment Agency projects in the City of Pasadena, but it is not yet clear (as the property and others like it are not yet fifty years of age) what the significance of that context is. These types of projects have not had a lasting legacy on the planning of Pasadena, for most of them were targeted for major revisions within ten to thirty years of their construction. Their boldest characteristics, for better or for worse, are being systematically erased by later generations in an attempt to better integrate them into the established scale of the urban fabric.

For these reasons, ARG has determined that the BankAmericard Center at 101 S. Marengo is not eligible for historical designation at the local, state, or national level.

8. RESOURCES

8.1 Publications and Reports

Birnbaum, Charles, ed. Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture II: Making Postwar Landscapes Visible. Washington, DC: Spacemaker Press, 2004.

California Office of Historic Preservation, Technical Assistance Series #6, “California Register and National Register: A Comparison (for purposes of determining eligibility for the California Register),” Web. Accessed 9 Nov 2015.

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City of Pasadena Zoning Code. Chapter 17.62: Historic Preservation. Accessed October 28, 2015. http://ww2.cityofpasadena.net/zoning/P‐6.html#17.62.

Lund, Ann Scheid. Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History. San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 1999.

Gebhard, David and Robert Winter. Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1994.

Historic Resources Group and Pasadena Heritage. Cultural Resources of the Recent Past Historic Context Report. Prepared for City of Pasadena, Oct. 2007.

Historic Resources Group. 100 West Walnut Planned Development Historic Resources Technical Report. Prepared for City of Pasadena, June 2014.

Hunting, Mary Anne. Edward Durell Stone: Modernism's Populist Architect (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).

National Park Service, National Register Bulletin 15, How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation. Washington DC: National Park Service, 1990; rev. 1991, 1995, 1997.

Phemister, Molly. “Biography of Edward Stone Jr.” Web log post, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, 28 Sept 2009. Web. Accessed 5 Nov 2015.

RTKL Associates, Inc. Central District Specific Plan. Prepared for the City of Pasadena Planning and Development Department, Nov. 2004.

Stone, Edward Durell. The Evolution of an Architect. New York: Horizon Press, 1962.

Stone, Hicks. Edward Durell Stone: A Son's Untold Story of a Legendary Architect. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2011.

8.2 Archival and Newspaper Sources

ARG conducted primary research in the following repositories for this project. We read over fifty published articles; while it is not practical to list them all here, all were obtained from the sources listed below and are cited in footnotes above where necessary.

Pasadena Public Library, Central Library, Centennial Room (Special Collections), Pasadena, Calif. Vertical file on Bank of America/BankAmericard Center.

Pasadena Museum of History, Archives, Pasadena, Calif.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Los Angeles Times. Accessed on line through Los Angeles Public Library web site, .

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University of Arkansas Library, Special Collections, Fayetteville, Ark. Edward Durell Stone Papers, containing project plans, photographs, newspaper articles, and job files.

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