“ Sunnycrest” 
grow and attain age and artistic settlers that the 
effect of the landscape artist and the real artist 
architect begins to be felt. Nature always lends 
herself as an aid to the artist, this being especially 
true in Southern California where peculiar con¬ 
ditions hold, particularly in the fast-growing city 
of Pasadena, at the head of the San Gabriel valley. 
This city is hardly thirty years old. The locality 
was a semi-desert in summer, covered with grease- 
wood and chaparral; to-day it is one of the most 
beautiful places in the country, having all the evi¬ 
dence of age and maturity which a remarkably 
rapid growth can bring. The beautiful photo¬ 
graphs, by Hance, of the home of Mr. and Mrs. 
Robert J. Burdette, which illustrate this paper, 
emphasize this, as twenty-one years ago “Sunny¬ 
crest” was a barren, weed-grown hill, given over 
to gophers, tumbleweed and native grasses. Then 
it became an orange grove, and a fashionable and 
attractive avenue crept through the groves at its 
feet, and the hill in the course of its evolution became 
too valuable to raise oranges upon, and finally 
became the home place of Mrs. Burdette, whose 
taste and originality are seen in all its beautiful 
lines and in its many nooks and corners. 
Few places in America have an architecture 
that is sui generis , and throughout the land Colonial, 
French, Old English, Flemish and Dutch fancies 
are combined to make the towns and cities what 
they are; but in Southern California it is different. 
Here is a pronounced and peculiar architecture. 
The old Mission Fathers blazed the way into its 
valley from the South, and their ideas being purely 
Moorish, they built all the missions along these 
graceful and beautiful lines; arches, red and yellow 
splashes of color, tiles suggestive of Spain and the 
Moors, features restful to the eye and senses. 
The architecture is not for the eye alone, but is 
pre-eminently practical. Southern California is a 
semi-tropic country, so far as its flora is concerned. 
Warm weather may be expected from July to 
October, though it can be said not so disagreeable 
nor intense as the humid weather of the East. In 
winter the nights are cool, with occasional frost, 
therefore it is necessary to keep both cool and warm, 
hence the adobe, which the early Mexicans con¬ 
ceived out of the exigencies of the situation. The 
adobe mud, found in various parts of the country, 
is made into bricks and houses built with walls 
often over two feet in thickness. The roof is of tiling, 
and the result is a cool house in summer and a warm 
one in winter; in a word, heat and cold are shut 
out and kept out. 
The old missions were all built of adobe, and the 
modern Moorish or mission house of Southern 
California is a practical adaptation of the idea, emi¬ 
nently satisfactory. Instead of adobe, stucco or 
plaster is used, and when painted in rich yellow, 
orange or red hues it adapts itself in a remarkable 
way to the bright sunlight, the blaze of color that 
is a characteristic feature of Southern California. 
“Sunnycrest” is a typical home of this kind. The 
house is essentially Moorish in its design, is an 
adaptation of the so-called mission style, the Moor¬ 
ish, with a very important addition, “American 
comforts.” It stands on a sightly hill commanding 
the San Gabriel valley, and has an outlook, a setting 
which gives it scenic rank among the most beautiful 
spots in America. The house faces the west ridge 
ol the San Gabriel valley, which is environed by 
low spurs from the main Sierras. It overlooks a 
deep canon—the Arroyo Seco,—a river of fragrant 
verdure, which sweeps down from the mountains, 
bringing the breath of the forest and its trees into 
the very city. To the north and east rise the Sierra 
Madre, a grim wall of peaks and ranges, rising 
from six thousand feet at Pasadena in Mount 
Wilson to eleven thousand feet in Mount San 
Antonio, thirty-five miles distant. This range is 
thirty or forty miles wide, a marvelous jumble of 
ranges and peaks, cut by myriads of canons which 
pour their brooks and streams down into the San 
Gabriel valley and across it in winter to the sea. 
In summer from “Sunnycrest” the range lies in 
a golden haze, the peaks bare, but in winter, when 
the valley runs riot with flowers, when the slopes 
are aflame with the golden Eschscholtzia and count¬ 
less flowers, the range is often white with snow 
down to the three thousand-foot level, and one of the 
most remarkable panoramas to be seen in any land 
is presented—winter and semi-tropic summer face 
to face. Yet the valley is redolent with the perfume 
of flowers and the harsh breath of winter rarely 
gains the ascendency. So from “Sunnycrest” the 
eye rests on banks of snow, great trees bowing 
beneath its weight; sees it rolling up the north 
slope of San Antonio to the summit, then in gigantic 
wraiths, whirled off" over the valleys with their 
groves of orange, lemon, grapefruit, olive and 
numerous other trees. The eye rises to snow 
banks, and drops upon flowers; it encompasses all 
zones. Yet in the gardens of “Sunnycrest” on 
this winter day it is snowing; but the snowflakes 
which cover the ground are orange petals, whose 
fragrance blends with the perfume of California 
violets and fills the air. Winter is there, not five 
miles away, and one may reach it on the mountain 
road in an hour and don snow-shoes and enjoy the 
delights of winter even to a sleigh ride up the trail 
to the summit. But to reach it one is forced to 
pass through groves of ripening oranges, straw¬ 
berry patches, and a region that is the garden spot 
of the world in the luxuriance of its growth, the 
splendor of its floral offerings. 
As I write, the gardens of “ Sunnycrest” are 
before me, being but a stone’s throw from my own 
47 
