Robert R. Blacker House
Encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the house that is part of the House System at the California Institute of Technology
The Robert Roe Blacker House, often referred to as the Blacker House or Robert R. Blacker House, is a residence
in Pasadena, California
, which is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1907 by Robert Roe and Nellie Canfield Blacker and designed by Henry and Charles Greene, of the renowned Pasadena firm of Greene and Greene
. This house was a lavish project for the Greene brothers, costing in excess of US$100,000.00 ($ today). Everything for the house was custom designed, down to the teak
escutcheon plates of the upstairs mahogany panel doors to the linen closets with their ebony
cloud adorned keys.
lumberman. He was a member of several lumbering firms in Manistee, Michigan
, including R.R. Blacker & Company, Davies, Blacker & Company and the State Lumber Company. Among other interests, he was also president of the Michigan Steamship Company, original owners of the ill-fated SS Eastland.
Robert Blacker preceded his wife in death in 1931. Upon Nellie's death in 1946, the property went into probate as the Blackers did not identify any heirs. In her Last Will and Testament, Nellie specified the house and all of its belongings to be sold as a whole; the house, land, and its furnishings were not be to parceled off.
Unfortunately, the representative of Nellie Blacker's estate decided to maximize the value of the assets in contravention to her expressed wishes and marketed the property as something that could be bought and then parceled off by the purchaser, subsequent to the sale. The seven acre (2.8 hectare) estate was divided into smaller parcels, destroying the gardens in the process. The main residence was sold, placed on a small one acre (0.4 hectare) parcel. The garage became a separate residence, as did the caretaker's cottage. The remainder of the gardens were subdivided into separate lots.
More notable, though, was the infamous "yard sale" conducted shortly after the sale in probate
where the furnishing were sold off, in a yard sale fashion. Furniture built for the Blacker House is now in museum
s and in the hands of wealthy collectors and Hollywood luminaries. One family, the Andersons, lived down the street and were able to buy a large lot of furniture. In 1990, an Anderson family member offered the then-owners of the Blacker House the ability to purchase the breakfast room table for the remarkable sum of $390,000.00; the table was later sold at auction for approximately $70,000. This adroitly establishes the value Greene and Greene artifacts can achieve in the auction marketplace. On 19 June 2007, the following Greene and Greene items; living room chair, bedroom chair, and bedroom andirons were sold at Sotheby's
fetching prices, including Buyer's premium and New York sales tax, of $913,600, $396,000, and $66,000 respectively.
, Mr. English hired a well known local antique dealer to remove more than forty eight original lighting fixtures for him. Later he also removed some of the leaded art glass doors, windows, and transom panels; only after commissioning a well known local studio to produce exact reproductions of the doors and windows that were to be removed. Many of the original pieces were sold on the art market. This incident has been referred to as the "Rape of the Blacker House".
National media attention to this sad sequence of events was facilitated through the efforts of Pasadena Heritage executive director Claire Bogaard. Articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times
, Washington Post and New York Times. Pasadena enacted an emergency ordinance, known as the Blacker Ordinance, which attempted to limit the ability of people owning homes designed by Greene and Greene to dismantle or otherwise destroy artifacts therein. Although not a direct prohibition, the ordinance delayed for up to one year any changes or alterations, subject to review of a committee of the Planning Commission. Conservation-minded citizens guarded the Blacker house day and night to keep further fixtures from being removed.
Several of the chandeliers sold for approximately $250,000 and many of the lamps fetched $100,000 each. As Mr. English paid only $1 million for the home, he quickly recouped his investment on the sale of the fixtures. He sold the home in 1988, for 1.2 million, having never lived in it.
The Knells worked with Randall Makinson, a restoration architect with a specialty in Greene and Greene, and James Ipekjian, a master craftsman, along with an entire team of like minded mastercraftsmen that were specialists in their fields. The building was restored inside and out. Ipekjian was responsible for re-creating the wood work of the lamps and other fixtures; he even traveled to see one of the original pieces in order to make a correct copy. The house was entirely re-wired and re-plumbed, the structure upgraded to withstand earthquakes, and discreet ventilation ducts were installed. Every shingle was removed and either restored or replaced, all timbers were stripped and refinished, and nearly all the tail rafters cantilevering beyond the roof line needed to be replaced. After four years of restoration, a benefit dinner hosted by actor Brad Pitt
celebrated the completion of the project.
The house is still privately owned and is located at 1177 Hillcrest Avenue in Pasadena; it commands a grand and stately yet earthy presence in Pasadena's Hillcrest neighborhood.
, interior shots of Dr. Brown's house were taken inside the Blacker House; the exterior shots were of the Blacker House's "smaller brother", the Gamble House.
House System at the California Institute of Technology
The House System is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology . Caltech's unique House system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the houses are probably more similar in size and character to the...
The Robert Roe Blacker House, often referred to as the Blacker House or Robert R. Blacker House, is a residence
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
in Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, which is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1907 by Robert Roe and Nellie Canfield Blacker and designed by Henry and Charles Greene, of the renowned Pasadena firm of Greene and Greene
Greene and Greene
Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene , influential early 20th Century American architects...
. This house was a lavish project for the Greene brothers, costing in excess of US$100,000.00 ($ today). Everything for the house was custom designed, down to the teak
Teak
Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...
escutcheon plates of the upstairs mahogany panel doors to the linen closets with their ebony
Ebony
Ebony is a dense black wood, most commonly yielded by several species in the genus Diospyros, but ebony may also refer to other heavy, black woods from unrelated species. Ebony is dense enough to sink in water. Its fine texture, and very smooth finish when polished, make it valuable as an...
cloud adorned keys.
Robert & Nellie Blacker
Blacker (1845–1931) was a retired MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
lumberman. He was a member of several lumbering firms in Manistee, Michigan
Manistee, Michigan
Manistee is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 6,586. It is the county seat of Manistee County. The name "Manistee" is from an Ojibwe word first applied to the principal river of the county. The derivation is not certain, but it may be from...
, including R.R. Blacker & Company, Davies, Blacker & Company and the State Lumber Company. Among other interests, he was also president of the Michigan Steamship Company, original owners of the ill-fated SS Eastland.
Robert Blacker preceded his wife in death in 1931. Upon Nellie's death in 1946, the property went into probate as the Blackers did not identify any heirs. In her Last Will and Testament, Nellie specified the house and all of its belongings to be sold as a whole; the house, land, and its furnishings were not be to parceled off.
Unfortunately, the representative of Nellie Blacker's estate decided to maximize the value of the assets in contravention to her expressed wishes and marketed the property as something that could be bought and then parceled off by the purchaser, subsequent to the sale. The seven acre (2.8 hectare) estate was divided into smaller parcels, destroying the gardens in the process. The main residence was sold, placed on a small one acre (0.4 hectare) parcel. The garage became a separate residence, as did the caretaker's cottage. The remainder of the gardens were subdivided into separate lots.
More notable, though, was the infamous "yard sale" conducted shortly after the sale in probate
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
where the furnishing were sold off, in a yard sale fashion. Furniture built for the Blacker House is now in museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s and in the hands of wealthy collectors and Hollywood luminaries. One family, the Andersons, lived down the street and were able to buy a large lot of furniture. In 1990, an Anderson family member offered the then-owners of the Blacker House the ability to purchase the breakfast room table for the remarkable sum of $390,000.00; the table was later sold at auction for approximately $70,000. This adroitly establishes the value Greene and Greene artifacts can achieve in the auction marketplace. On 19 June 2007, the following Greene and Greene items; living room chair, bedroom chair, and bedroom andirons were sold at Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
fetching prices, including Buyer's premium and New York sales tax, of $913,600, $396,000, and $66,000 respectively.
A National Treasure dismantled
The house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Max Hill in the 1950s. In 1985, recently widowed, Mrs. Hill sold the property to Barton English, a Princeton graduate and rancher from Texas, and Michael Carey, a prominent dealer of Arts and Crafts era antiques from New york City. Shortly after close of escrowEscrow
An escrow is:* an arrangement made under contractual provisions between transacting parties, whereby an independent trusted third party receives and disburses money and/or documents for the transacting parties, with the timing of such disbursement by the third party dependent on the fulfillment of...
, Mr. English hired a well known local antique dealer to remove more than forty eight original lighting fixtures for him. Later he also removed some of the leaded art glass doors, windows, and transom panels; only after commissioning a well known local studio to produce exact reproductions of the doors and windows that were to be removed. Many of the original pieces were sold on the art market. This incident has been referred to as the "Rape of the Blacker House".
National media attention to this sad sequence of events was facilitated through the efforts of Pasadena Heritage executive director Claire Bogaard. Articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Washington Post and New York Times. Pasadena enacted an emergency ordinance, known as the Blacker Ordinance, which attempted to limit the ability of people owning homes designed by Greene and Greene to dismantle or otherwise destroy artifacts therein. Although not a direct prohibition, the ordinance delayed for up to one year any changes or alterations, subject to review of a committee of the Planning Commission. Conservation-minded citizens guarded the Blacker house day and night to keep further fixtures from being removed.
Several of the chandeliers sold for approximately $250,000 and many of the lamps fetched $100,000 each. As Mr. English paid only $1 million for the home, he quickly recouped his investment on the sale of the fixtures. He sold the home in 1988, for 1.2 million, having never lived in it.
Restoration
When the home was offered for sale in 1994 it was purchased by Harvey and Ellen Knell. At the time the couple were in escrow on another Greene and Greene house, however, they backed out of that purchase in order to obtain the Blacker house.The Knells worked with Randall Makinson, a restoration architect with a specialty in Greene and Greene, and James Ipekjian, a master craftsman, along with an entire team of like minded mastercraftsmen that were specialists in their fields. The building was restored inside and out. Ipekjian was responsible for re-creating the wood work of the lamps and other fixtures; he even traveled to see one of the original pieces in order to make a correct copy. The house was entirely re-wired and re-plumbed, the structure upgraded to withstand earthquakes, and discreet ventilation ducts were installed. Every shingle was removed and either restored or replaced, all timbers were stripped and refinished, and nearly all the tail rafters cantilevering beyond the roof line needed to be replaced. After four years of restoration, a benefit dinner hosted by actor Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
celebrated the completion of the project.
The house is still privately owned and is located at 1177 Hillcrest Avenue in Pasadena; it commands a grand and stately yet earthy presence in Pasadena's Hillcrest neighborhood.
In popular culture
In the movie Back to the FutureBack to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...
, interior shots of Dr. Brown's house were taken inside the Blacker House; the exterior shots were of the Blacker House's "smaller brother", the Gamble House.