News of the Arroyo
Title: | Citybeats: There's often more than meets the eye |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2009-01-19 |
Summary: | January 19, 2009 - More of the lore behind the bird sanctuary in Pasadena's Lower Arroyo. |
Author: | Staff Reports |
Publication: | Pasadena Star-News |
Content: | Behind every story in Pasadena it seems there\'s another, better story. A community meeting Saturday discussed the almost-forgotten Lower Arroyo Seco bird sanctuary - due for a $225,000 face-lift. City info notes it was built in 1935 with a $45,000 gift from Miss Emma E. Dickinson. But what the city didn\'t tell us, Pasadena historian Ann Scheid does. Rifling through some old copies of the Star-News and Pasadena Independents to research the sanctuary, she uncovered what sounds like a P.G. Wodehouse novel: Miss Dickinson, a Michigan heiress who spent 20 years as a missionary in Japan, died in 1926 at age 83. So why the nine-year gap between her death and the sanctuary construction? Scheid discovered Dickinson left a hand-written will bequeathing the city her house at 770 Arden Road, and her collections of rare talking birds and Japanese curios. But, the newspapers recount, the will was challenged by other beneficiaries - Mt. Holyoke College (her alma mater) and the Methodist Women\'s Foreign Missionary Society - and some cousins. The city eventually settled for $45,000 in cash and the Japanese collection. The funds were used to build Brookside Golf Club, Scheid says, and the curios were displayed at City Hall - until two valuable vases went missing, whereupon the city decided to send the curios to Mt. Holyoke. Miss Dickinson\'s friends in Pasadena suggested the bird sanctuary as a memorial and it was built in 1935 - using the State Employment Relief Agency, a Depression-era labor force. |
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