Pasadena, March 10.
People who care more for comfort than for great “style,” who prefer a quiet, home-like, family house to one of noise and bustle, those who are seeking health, pure air and out-door life with grand views rather than the music, dancing and entertainments of a fashionable hotel may jot down as a memorandum “The Painter Hotel, at Pasadena, Cal,” thirty-five minutes by train from Los Angeles and fifteen minutes by “free ’bus” from passenger station.
It is a new house, was built in ’88; it accommodates seventy-five boarders, and is owned and kept by J. H. Painter’s Sons. The house is airy, the bedrooms are comfortably (not luxuriously) furnished, the parlor is pleasant, the class of guests select, the table is well provided, and at once, let me say, ere the important fact escapes me, the rates are remarkably low for the nice appointments and good fare supplied—only $2.50 per day for transient guests, and from $12.50 to $17.50 per week to season boarders, for people come to stay for a month or so—some spend the whole winter here. The house is open the year round, it being pleasant in summer as well as in winter. It is a mountainous district, and the ocean, from which come soft winds in summer, is only thirty minutes’ distant in a south and southwesterly direction.
Yes, and here are two more facts—Pasadena is one thousand feet above the sea, and the Painter Hotel, which is one and a half miles from the centre of the town, stands on the highest point hereabouts.
The grounds comprised in the property include ten acres, upon which the owners grow their own fruits for the table—peaches, apricots, raisins, prunes, etc.
Do you want to visit the town? Street cars pass the door of the Painter. And if you want a view it will “pay” you to climb up to the roof of the hotel, where there is an observatory. Three miles off is the Raymond Hotel, plain to your view in this clear atmosphere. On one side is the San Bernardino range of mountains, on the other the Sierra Madre range. You may see San Jacinto, ninety miles away, also Wilson’s Peak, upon which the new observatory, with its powerful lens, is to be placed; and beautiful San Gabriel valley is spread out immediately beneath you, a feature of which, at this writing, are acres of large, orange-hued poppies, so bright that you could almost imagine them aflame, especially if the wind is blowing, thus giving vibration to the thin, delicate leaves.
The drives are a most delightful feature:—to the city proper, with its wide avenues of beautiful residences, to San Gabriel mission, and to “Lucky” Baldwin’s ranch, a pleasant afternoon drive.
Those who are planning a winter or spring tour will thank me for suggesting a visit to the Painter House, but if people demand “style,” if they would dance to orchestral music; if they demand great size in a dining-room and grandeur in the drawing-room, and they are willing to pay for it, all these are also obtainable here, or rather at East Pasadena, which is only three miles distant; eight miles from Los Angeles. And the price, $4.50 per day, $21 to $28 per week, is reasonable considering what you get for the money.
Reference is made to the great Raymond Hotel, which was built in 1886, where they have a bar, as well as billiards and bowling; elevator, electric lights, a reception-room, music-room, grand parlor, and a dining-room which accommodates three hundred persons. From your seat at table you see “Old Baldy” looming above the clouds eleven thousand feet and snow-covered ten months out of the twelve, looking like a great sugar-loaf and recalling the Jungfrau, near Interlaken, Switzerland.