Search Is On for New Owner of Greene & Greene Apartments
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Jan. 15, 2008
The only apartment building that famed architects Greene & Greene ever designed won a stay of execution last month.
Although the city of Pasadena, Calif., has issued a demolition permit for the Herkimer Arms apartments, the owner has agreed to hold off. Fuller Theological Seminary, which owns the 1912 building, gave a coalition of preservationists six months to find a new owner.
"They're promising up to six months, providing progress is being made," says Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage. "We're kind of back in scramble mode."
On Dec. 15, after a prospective buyer failed to provide Fuller with a complete proposal for the building, the seminary decided did not renew the developer's contract to adopt the building.
For the past month, Pasadena Heritage and others—realtors, local architects, and Greene & Greene devotees—have been "looking at, evaluating, beating the bushes, hitting the streets, and considering other sites for the building," Mossman says.
In 2006, the city's planning commission approved Fuller's plan to build a new 500-seat chapel on the site of the Herkimer Arms building. The city later granted a one-year stay on a demolition permit for the building, which expired in November 2007.
Best known for their innovations in the arts and crafts style, Charles and Henry Greene designed the Gamble House, also in Pasadena. (Save America's Treasures awarded $350,000 toward the restoration of the Gamble House in 2002.)
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