History of The Barcelona of Pasadena and its Builders

by Scott Feldmann

Pasadena’s First Co-operative Apartment Hotel

The historic Barcelona of Pasadena was designed and constructed in the Roaring Twenties by The Littleton Company, as the first of two buildings planned to be built by them, with the second being the Pasadena Playhouse.

Covington Henry Scott Littleton, born on a plantation in Maryland in 1860, became a dentist, inventor, builder, wealthy capitalist and extraordinary personality who was part of the blossoming of Pasadena after he and his family moved to the West Coast in 1908 (1). He married Clara Hazen, a Society Girl who he met on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, and they named their first son Covington Henry Scott Littleton, Junior. Born in Philadelphia in 1896, he grew up in Pasadena, from age 11, and rode a white charger in the 1915 Tournament of Roses. Before becoming a prodigious local builder, he attended Pasadena High School, excelling in debate, then attended Stanford, Occidental, and Berkeley, which he left early to enlist in WWI. Upon returning from military service in Chatham, Massachusetts, where he trained pilots and hunted German U-Boats, he joined his father, who had become an Orange Grove Man and a real estate speculator, and together with his brother Calvin they started The Littleton Company, a design-build firm of quality homes and commercial buildings.

Pasadena, Hollywood and The Barcelona

In 1924, Littleton Jr., after completing The Barcelona, laid the cornerstone for the Pasadena Playhouse, (2) and supervised its foundation for a hand-off to The Winter Company, contractors for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, who would complete the project. (3) He then went on to become a playwright, then a detective for the Los Angeles District Attorney, and finally a Hollywood screenwriter. He married Adeline Hotchkiss Keogh, who became a formidable voice in the repeal of the 18th Amendment -Prohibition, (4) and a Rosie the Riveter in WWII. (5) Their son, the third Covington Henry Scott Littleton, would become an anthropologist and professor at Occidental College, as well as a famed eyewitness to the UFO siting known as the Battle Over LA – the as-yet unexplained visitation in the skies by a bright shiny object that survived over 1,500 shells from panicked U. S. Army gunners. It was just months after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1942. (6)

In a very short burst of time between the first World War and the dawn of the Great Depression, Pasadena experienced exuberant growth. The Littleton Company would build some of the finest homes and apartment buildings to welcome the new population, as well as introduce the concept of cooperative home-ownership through The Barcelona. (7) This led directly to the conversion of the Castle Green from a vacant hotel to an owner-occupied residential building. (8) Beyond those two “Ownership Apartment” experiments, Pasadena did not embrace the co-op concept as did New York City, (although in 1952, the Maryland Gardens Apartments converted from hotel to co-ops, renamed The Townhouse). (9) In the 1920s, three other co-ops were advertised in Pasadena, but seem not to have been built. By the mid 1990s, The Barcelona and Castle Green had converted to condominiums, as did the Maryland in 2013, in a response to modern banking requirements for mortgages.

From 1908 until 1937, when the Littleton’s retreated to live year-round at their former summer home on The Strand in Hermosa Beach, the family would endure many heights and depths: Family fortunes gained and lost, two World Wars, the Great Depression, Prohibition, personal tragedy and business betrayal. In the process, they championed three great architects in the community – Elmer Grey, Louis DuPuget Millar and Walter C. Folland. They lost a fortune to Jack Frost, when their Orange Groves froze over in 1913, and they lost most of what was left in the wake of their big gamble on The Littleton Company, which may have grown too quickly for its own sustainability. They lost a son, too young: Calvin Hazen Tracy Littleton, popular president of his class at Pasadena High School in 1916, who died at age 23. They lost a trusted business partner, who represented them in selling the first co-op units only until he left and created the competition by converting part of the Hotel Green to the Castle Green, Pasadena’s second co-op residential experiment. The Crash in 1929 may have been a final blow for the family, as it was for the whole country. Eventually, they all moved from Pasadena to Hermosa Beach, where they still owned the first home in California that was “Littleton-Built,” as their ads often proclaimed.

The Littleton Legacy

The senior Covington died in 1942, at age 82, and the San Francisco Examiner and Pasadena Star-News noted that he had invented the dentist’s treadle drill. The Star-News mentioned that he had built the first strictly professional building in the United States, in Philadelphia. It’s also true that he was awarded the patents for inventing a Fastener for Corsets, and a modernized smudge pot called the Orchard Heater, tested by the scientists at CalTech, but too late to save the 1,000 acres of citrus that Littleton once owned.

“Cov” Jr., known professionally as Scott Littleton, died in 1972 in Joshua Tree, with an unpublished novel under his belt, and a string of film credits from the era of “The Talkies,” as Director of Sound Effects for Pathé Studios and screenwriter on several features, as well as a few TV episodes from when television came along in the 1950s. His greatest act may have been as a G-Man, protecting Mae West with a machine gun, (10) or securing the conviction of Rattlesnake James, a murderer, (11) or perhaps on the investigative work that led to the demise of the corrupt Mayor of Los Angeles, Frank Shaw. (12)

These two Littleton men, the forces behind The Barcelona, and influencers of the Pasadena Playhouse design, are little known today, despite their bold quests in building and great accomplishments in creative endeavors.

Nearly 100-years old, The Barcelona and the Pasadena Playhouse stand today as their legacy, as do about two dozen single family homes and apartment buildings in the area.

References

1. Littleton, C. Scott, “2500 Strand,” Red Hill Press, 2007. Note that subsequent research indicates a 1908 arrival date but the author gives the family lore in his memoir.

2. Southwest Builder & Contractor, June 6, 1924, P. 57, Col. 1.

3. Los Angeles Times, Sunday, September 28, 1924, P. 66

4. Los Angeles Times, Sunday, November 12, 1933, P. 44

5. 2500 Strand

6. ibid

7. Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 20, 1923, P. 95

8. “Green Will Be Put to New Use,” Pasadena Star-News, February 26, 1924, Development Section, P. 1.

9. Padve, M., “A Bit of the Old Maryland Lives On,” Pasadena Heritage Newsletter, April 1990

10. “Officers Capture Mae West Death Threat Suspect,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1935

11. Winchell, Walter, “Murder Solved by Playwright in Writing logical Third Act.” Salt Lake Telegram, September 16, 1936, P. 14

12. 2500 Strand

Scott Feldmann ©2020. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with Permission.