Architect

G. Lawrence Stimson

1882–1939

Profile

About G. Lawrence Stimson.

G. Lawrence Stimson (1882 to 1939) was a Pasadena architect and builder responsible for approximately 350 Craftsman bungalows in Pasadena and South Pasadena between roughly 1905 and the late 1910s, plus a smaller number of larger commissions. His SGV catalog includes the Italian Renaissance Revival mansion on South Orange Grove Boulevard now known as the Tournament House (1906 to 1914), the Mission Revival residence at 227 Oaklawn Avenue in South Pasadena with Greene and Greene-designed interiors (1907), and the 1917 Stimson family residence in San Marino. He worked inside the family real estate development business his father, George Woodbury Stimson, founded in Pasadena in the late 1880s.

G. Lawrence Stimson designed and built approximately 350 Craftsman and bungalow homes in Pasadena and South Pasadena between roughly 1905 and the late 1910s, plus a smaller number of larger residential commissions including the Italian Renaissance Revival mansion on Pasadena’s South Orange Grove Boulevard now known as the Tournament House. He worked across the styles of his period without fixing on one. His Pasadena Craftsman bungalows from 1905 to 1915 are the largest body of his SGV work. His Mission Revival residence at 227 Oaklawn Avenue in South Pasadena (now Casa Incantata, contributor to the California Register-listed Oaklawn Historic District; active South Pasadena landmark nomination and Mills Act application as of June 24, 2025), with Greene and Greene-designed interiors, is the single best-known smaller commission. The Tournament House, designed in 1906 and completed in 1914 (Pasadena Local Landmark, designated as the Wrigley Estate), is the largest and most identifiable.

The buyer cue for a Stimson home depends on which body of work the house belongs to. The Pasadena bungalows read first as restrained Craftsman, often built on speculation, on lots Stimson and his father acquired through the family real estate operation. They are well-built, proportioned for their lot rather than aspirational in scale, and recognized by Pasadena Heritage volunteers familiar with the Markham District and the bungalow neighborhoods around it. The Oaklawn Mission Revival is sui generis: Mission Revival exterior, Arts and Crafts interiors by Greene and Greene, on a tract that Stimson developed and partly sold to other architects. The Tournament House is the Italian Renaissance Revival outlier, an 18,500 square foot concrete and steel mansion built across eight years that has functioned as the headquarters of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association since 1958.

Stimson was born in 1882 in Washington Court House, Ohio. His family relocated to Southern California in 1885, where his father, George Woodbury Stimson, transitioned from the wholesale grocery business in Ohio into Southern California real estate development and home building. G. Lawrence attended Throop Polytechnic Institute, Pasadena High School, and the Thacher School in Ojai. He continued his studies in Europe at the Lycée in Grenoble and the Realschule in Leipzig before returning to join his father’s home-building enterprise. The Stimson operation, father and son together, is credited with over 1,000 homes across the Los Angeles area, the majority of them designed by G. Lawrence. He died in 1939 at age 57.

The distinguishing fact about Stimson’s career, for SGV identification purposes, is that he worked as both architect and builder. Many of the bungalows attributed to him have no published architectural drawings because they were built on speculation by his own crews. The attribution chain is the Pasadena building permit record and the Stimson family business filings rather than published plates. For a buyer evaluating a Pasadena bungalow marketed as a Stimson home, the documentation question is which record the attribution rests on. For the larger commissions, including the Tournament House and the Oaklawn residences, the documentation is robust.

Background and the Stimson family business

G. Lawrence Stimson worked inside the family business his father, George Woodbury Stimson, founded in Pasadena in the late 1880s. The operation was both real estate development and residential construction. The son became the design half of the operation after his European study. The two together are credited with over 1,000 Southern California houses.

The Stimson family relocated from Ohio to Southern California in 1885, when G. Lawrence was three. George W. Stimson had been in the wholesale grocery business in Washington Court House. In Pasadena he pivoted to real estate development, acquiring tracts and building speculative housing as Pasadena’s first major residential expansion was getting underway. By the time G. Lawrence returned from his European studies in the early 1900s, the family operation had the land, the crews, and the financing in place. G. Lawrence joined as the design half. His parents’ 1917 residence in the estate area of San Marino, designed by G. Lawrence in Italian Renaissance Revival style, is a record of what the operation could produce at the high end. The everyday output was bungalows. Among the documented Pasadena commissions, the 1909 residence at 1201 Avoca Avenue is a Pasadena Local Landmark and a contributor to the Pasadena Avenue Historic District (NRHP-listed August 10, 2021).

The Pasadena bungalow body of work

Approximately 350 Craftsman and bungalow homes in Pasadena and South Pasadena are credited to G. Lawrence Stimson and the family operation between roughly 1905 and 1920. Many were built on speculation. The bungalows are restrained, well-built, and proportioned for their lots. The Markham District, the Bungalow Heaven area, and several other Pasadena neighborhoods contain documented Stimson examples.

The Pasadena bungalow trade between 1905 and 1915 was the volume business of the Stimson operation. G. Lawrence designed and the family business built. The houses run small to medium in scale: 1,200 to 2,500 square feet typically, single-story or one-and-a-half-story, with the deep porches, exposed rafter tails, wood-shingle or stucco-and-river-rock cladding, low-pitched gabled roofs, and built-in cabinetry characteristic of the broader Pasadena Craftsman vocabulary. The diagnostic that separates a Stimson bungalow from the surrounding stock is proportion and material discipline rather than ornament. The houses are built to outlast their lot. Wood framing is typically Douglas fir, sometimes redwood for exterior trim, with the kind of joinery that comes from a builder running his own crews rather than from a subcontracted shell. Pasadena Heritage maintains volunteer-led documentation of bungalow attributions in the Markham District, the Pasadena Avenue Historic District (NRHP-listed August 10, 2021), and adjacent neighborhoods, and remains the most reliable starting point for an attribution check on a Pasadena bungalow without published plates.

The 227 Oaklawn residence and the Greene and Greene connection

In 1907 G. Lawrence Stimson designed the residence at 227 Oaklawn Avenue in South Pasadena in Mission Revival style and engaged Greene and Greene to design the interiors. The arrangement is documented and unusual. Stimson also developed the Oaklawn Tract and commissioned six additional Greene and Greene residences as anchor properties to set the price level for the tract.

The 227 Oaklawn house, sometimes called the Pryor House, is the most architecturally significant smaller commission in Stimson’s catalog. Stimson designed the exterior in the Mission Revival vocabulary he was working with around 1907 and 1908: tile roof, smooth stucco walls, arcaded openings, restrained ornament. The interior commission to Greene and Greene is unusual because the firm rarely worked inside other architects’ designs. The original Greene and Greene drawings for the Oaklawn residence are held at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, listed as Greene and Greene job number 222 with a date of 1907. Stimson’s role in the Oaklawn Tract is documented in South Pasadena city records. The tract itself was subdivided in 1903 by the South Pasadena Realty and Improvement Company and transferred to the S.W. Ferguson Company; Stimson acquired the 227 Oaklawn parcel for his commission and designed additional houses that contribute to the Oaklawn Historic District. Other architects and developers active on the tract included Kavanaugh and Barnes and Arthur Burnett Benton. The Greene and Greene stone bridge and waiting station along Oaklawn Avenue (NRHP-listed July 16, 1973; South Pasadena Cultural Landmark No. 3), still standing, were built in 1906 to set the architectural character of the tract entry. A second G. Lawrence Stimson commission on Oaklawn Avenue, the G.W. Stimson House at 203 Oaklawn (Italian Revival, c. 1909), is a documented South Pasadena Centennial Heritage Home with Mills Act status, designed by G. Lawrence for his father George Woodbury Stimson as a smaller-scale interpretation of the Tournament House.

The Tournament House on South Orange Grove

G. Lawrence Stimson designed the 18,500-square-foot Italian Renaissance Revival mansion on Pasadena’s South Orange Grove Boulevard, beginning construction in 1906 and completing in 1914. The house was built for his father, George Woodbury Stimson, and sold to chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in 1914 for $170,000. Since 1958 it has served as the headquarters of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association.

The Tournament House is the largest and most identifiable commission in the Stimson catalog. The Stimson family residence was designed by G. Lawrence for his father George W. Stimson on a Millionaires’ Row lot on South Orange Grove Boulevard. Construction began in 1906. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake redirected California construction materials and tradesmen to the Bay Area for several years and slowed the Pasadena project. The house was completed in 1914 as a three-story, 18,500-square-foot Italian Renaissance Revival mansion in concrete and steel, an unusual structural choice for a Pasadena residence of the period and a response to seismic concerns. By the time it was finished the Stimson children had moved on and George W. found the house too large. He sold it to William Wrigley Jr. in 1914 for $170,000. Wrigley purchased the adjacent lot in 1915 for $25,000 and developed the 4.5-acre Wrigley Gardens still on the property. The Wrigley family gifted the house and grounds to the City of Pasadena in 1958, on condition that it serve as the Tournament of Roses Association headquarters in perpetuity. The house is open for public tours.

Identifying a Stimson house in the San Gabriel Valley today

Stimson identification depends on which body of work the house belongs to. For the Pasadena bungalows, the documentation rests on building permits and the Pasadena Heritage volunteer record. For the Oaklawn residence, the Tournament House, and the larger published commissions, the documentation is robust.

The buyer evaluating a property marketed as a Stimson home should ask first which Stimson body it belongs to. If the house is a Pasadena Craftsman bungalow attributed to Stimson, the documentation is most reliably found in the Pasadena Heritage record and the Pasadena city building permit archive. If the attribution is to George W. Stimson the elder (the builder), the house is a Stimson family build, with G. Lawrence frequently as the designer of record. The Stimson family operation was vertically integrated, and the line between “designed by G. Lawrence Stimson” and “built by the Stimson family company” is not always crisp in surviving records. For the larger commissions, the documentation is direct: the Tournament House, the 227 Oaklawn residence, the 1917 San Marino parents’ estate, the 1912 residence at 299 Bellefontaine Street, and the 1928 residence at 588 East Glenarm Street are all photographed and published. For a Stimson house carrying authentic published documentation, the architectural provenance signal is a material factor in the listing.

What G. Lawrence Stimson homes signal in today’s San Gabriel Valley market

Pasadena Craftsman bungalows attributed to Stimson trade as a subset of the broader Craftsman inventory. The Tournament House and the 227 Oaklawn residence are landmark properties. Sell Odds reads documented Stimson properties through both the named-architect signal and the bungalow inventory cohort the smaller homes belong to.

The Stimson catalog spans two market segments. The Pasadena Craftsman bungalows trade within the broader Pasadena bungalow market, where the named-architect signal carries weight when the documentation is published or in the Pasadena Heritage record. The larger commissions, the Tournament House, and 227 Oaklawn function as architectural landmarks rather than transactional inventory. For a buyer considering a Pasadena bungalow marketed as a Stimson home, the right move is to verify which record the attribution rests on. Sell Odds reads documented Stimson bungalows separately from generic Pasadena Craftsman stock, because the sold comp set behaves differently when authentic published documentation supports the named-architect claim. For a seller of a Stimson property, the documentation surfaces value. Stimson is a name the local buyer pool recognizes.

Styles

Associated Styles.

Works

Notable Works in the SGV.

Sources

Sources and references.

ARROYO CASA

Mobile (310) 402-8430 · greg@arroyocasa.com

Greg Anderson, REALTOR® · DRE# 01071792

Proudly representing Coldwell Banker Sky Ridge Realty

Learn more about the Sell Odds development at sellodds.com

This guide is informational and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Mills Act eligibility, ADU permitting, and property tax implications vary by property and by year. Consult the relevant city, the Los Angeles County Assessor, and a licensed tax professional for guidance specific to your situation.