Plaza las Fuentes and the Westin Pasadena
Pasadena is an ideal climate for business. Probably no other city of its size is home to more internationally known businesses than Pasadena. One of the key reasons is the highly educated workforce resulting from the presence of many renowned educational and research institutions located in Pasadena. The majority (over 60%) of a labor force of 100,000 is employed in professional, managerial, technical, sales and clerical positions. Approximately 20% are employed in manufacturing and other light industrial companies while close to 15% are employed in the service industries.
From food and sports to science, art and industry, Pasadena has been a leader in innovation and new technology.
Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco was home to the Arts and Crafts movement on the west coast. In addition to Greene and Greene’s ultimate bungalows, Pasadena was a showcase for homes designed by Sylvanus Marston, Grable and Austin and Alfred Heineman. Plein Air painters flocked to the Arroyo Seco to capture the beauty of Pasadena. Elmer and Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel, Franz Bischoff, Edgar Payne and Jean Mannheim were among the artists who frequented Pasadena’s arroyo artist colony.
In the early 1920s, Lionel Sternberger invented the cheeseburger while working at the Rite Spot in Pasadena. After an unsuccessful attempt on Halloween, 1936, Caltech “rocket boys”, Frank Malina, Jack Parsons and Ed Forman from Caltech successfully launched their self-built rocket into the air in Pasadena’s upper Arroyo Seco fifteen days later.
Pasadena was also hometown to America’s first celebrity chef Julia Child and rockers Van Halen. The Ice House, the first comedy club in the country, continues to amuse and entertain at its Mentor Avenue location. Free form rock ‘n roll radio in Los Angeles was launched from a basement studio in the Pasadena Presbyterian Church when Tom and Raechel Donohue took over programming KPPC-FM in 1967. KROQ-FM, which began broadcasting from a studio in the Hilton Hotel in the 1970s, remains one of the trendsetters in youth-oriented alternative radio.
