| Address: |
443 S RAYMOND Ave |
APN: |
5722-005-009 |
This property is listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places.
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| Address: |
443 S RAYMOND Ave |
| City: |
Pasadena |
State: |
CA |
| Zip Code: |
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County: |
Los Angeles |
| County Code: |
37 |
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| Historic Name: |
ROYAL LAUNDRY |
Common Name: |
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| APN: |
5722-005-009 |
Zoning: |
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| Building Sq. Ft: |
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Site Size (Acres): |
1.900 |
| Year Built: |
1915 Documented |
District: |
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| District: |
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Property Status: |
Designated |
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| Resource Description: |
The Royal Laundry is a complex of buildings which housed the operations of a commercial laundry plant catering to a household laundry trade. This site is in an industrial area of Pasadena, directly south of the main historic commercial area of the city. The buildings are located at the southwest corner of South Raymond Avenue and Bellevue Drive, with most of the buildings aligned with the sidewalk and forming a continuous street wall. There are three main buildings at the street, and a garage and several small outbuildings and additions toward the alley that borders the rear of the property. With the exception of the Main Plant at the corner which is concrete, the buildings are of frame construction. The style of the buildings varies. The Main Plant is a somewhat unique industrial variation of stripped neoclassicism. The Drive-up Building is Streamline Moderne. The Annex Building was originally designed and built in a utilitarian style, but was partially altered in 1939 to integrate with the new Streamline Moderne Drive-up Building. The other buildings on the site are utilitarian, vernacular buildings. All buildings are one-story high with the exception of the Main Plant, which is a single volume with mezzanines built into the east and west sides.
Site Description
Royal Laundry has occupied a portion of the site since approximately 1910. Though other Royal Laundry buildings preceded the current ones on the site, the extant buildings were constructed in the follow order.
1. Garage, 1922, (source: building permit)
2. Main Plant at corner of Raymond and Bellevue, 1927 (source: historical ephemera and newspaper stories; year not entered on building permit)
3. South Annex of mail plant, c. 1930 (source: building permit not available; appears on 1931 Sanborn Map). Altered 1939.
4. Drive-up Building, 1939 (source: building permit)
5. Addition to rear of Drive-up Building, 1945 (source: building permit)
Main Plant
The Main Plant of the Royal Laundry was constructed in 1927. The building is rectangular in plan. The volume extends to the sidewalk on the north and east facades, and to the rear alley (Edmonson Alley) on the west façade. The exterior is poured in place board-formed concrete. The building has a sawtooth roof concealed by a surrounding parapet, the top of which is edged with a repeating wave or scalloped design. The basic industrial exterior is monumentalized by grouping the two stories of metal-sash windows into long, vertical bays. On the west end of the longer, north facade is an additional, fourth grouping three window bays wide to theist of a doorway, toward the alley. The columns and windows are framed with unadorned, rectilinear openings. The exterior wall along the alley (west) has two separate stories of rectangular window groupings on a purely utilitarian façade.
The main entrance is set within the central window bay on Raymond Avenue. The wood, double doors have a large glass light in the center, and are surmounted by a transom of octagonal, clear leaded glass. The entrance is surrounded in multicolored glazed tile from Tropico Potteries. Over the recessed doors, the tile features the name of the business with Royal Laundry’s coat of arms: a lion in a shield with a banner reading “unexcelled: below it. Green-blue glazed tile forms a wainscot at the base of the two bays to either side of the entrance.
The interior of the Main Plant is a single, very large volume. The sawtooth roof dominates the space, with wood facing on its sloping sides and steel sash windows on its north-facing, vertical sides. The roof is supported by thin steel columns. Only one row of these columns crosses the main space, and the others are located at the edge of the east and west mezzanines.
South Annex
The Annex building to the south of the Main Plant appears to have been constructed around 1930. The Annex is rectangular in plan, one story high, and covered by a flat roof surround by a parapet. The building is of frame construction with a concrete foundation, and the exterior is finished in stucco. The building is divided into two parts both in the interior and on the exterior. The south exterior of the east portion was remodeled in 1939 as part of the construction of the Drive-up Building to the south.
The interior of the Annex is a utilitarian space with flat, plastered ceiling and some frame partition walls built over time along the north side. The walls in the northwest corner of the front space are partially clad I light green tile which may be from the period of significance.
Drive-up Building and Rear Additions
The Drive-up Building was constructed to create a place for the public to interface with the plant when bringing their own laundry and dry cleaning. The building is one story high and irregular in plan, with a primary façade forming a concave curve to the street. The side facades (south and north) are flat, and the rear façade is L-shaped in plan. A horizontally striated metal fascia finishes the edge of the canopy. Large individual letters stand at the edge of the canopy, spelling, “Dry Cleaning”. A wing wall extending form the north side screens the interior driveway court from public view.
The curving primary façade has eleven bays of windows with double doors in the third, seventh and eleventh bays from the north. The windows are composed of three horizontal, aluminum-frame sashes. The doors are wood with a central glass panel. Original light fixtures flank the doors, composed of a vertical glass tube which runs between two short metal cylinders of the same diameter as the tube. The south end of the primary façade is punctuated by a tall Streamline Moderne pylon which carries signage, calls attention to the building from passing cars and defines the south end of the Royal Laundry complex.
The interior of the Drive-up Building has two main rooms. The front room is a reception area for customers to bring the laundry into the building. A second, back room is located behind (west) of the reception room. The walls are plastered and the floor is green, integrally colored concrete.
Garage
The 1922 garage is the oldest building on the site, built five years before the construction of the new Main Plant. The garage is framed in wood and clad in sheet metal on the sides and stucco on the front, where the front wall and parapet conceal a gambrel roof.
The interior of the garage is a large, single-height space with a roof support by wood trusses. The ceiling is wood on the highest surface of the gambrel and corrugated metal on the sloping sides. A system of pipes for fire protection is suspended from the ceiling. The interior of the front wall, which is stuccoed on the outside, has diagonal wood siding overlaid with vertical wood framing.
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| Legal Description: |
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| Primary Architectural Style: |
Neoclassical Revival |
| Secondary Architectural Style: |
Art Deco |
| Architect: |
Gordon B. Kaufmann |
| Builder: |
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| Contractor: |
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| Context: |
Early Automobile-oriented Properties
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| Original Owner: |
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| Original Use: |
Laundry |
| Original Location: |
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| Demolished: |
no |
| Notes: |
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| Moved: |
no |
| Date Moved: |
n/a |
| Designation Date: |
n/a |
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* This is a simplified statement of the property's status. Please review the NRHP Status Code field on the search screen for official, adopted status language.
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