In front of you is a large, elegant two-story house painted in warm brown, with a wide porch supported by white columns and triangular roof peaks above the windows-look ahead for a stately building nestled among trees that looks more like a storybook home than a typical school.
Now, picture yourself standing here in Pasadena over a century ago, the air buzzing with excitement and the swoosh of skirts on the steps as girls rushed into Miss Orton’s Classical School for Girls. Back in 1890, when many schools here simply prepared students for local colleges like Stanford or Berkeley, Miss Anna Orton had a much grander idea. She believed girls deserved the same rigorous education as boys, so she opened the very first non-religious private girls’ school in the city-a daring move for its time!
This building, with its crisp Victorian Colonial Revival style crafted by Frederick Roehrig, once echoed with lively debates and the scratching of pencils as young women learned Latin, math, and science. You’d see a single classroom in the early days, then a gymnasium-imagine the thunder of bouncing balls and the determined shouts of girls proving their strength. By 1900, a brand new dormitory let students from far and wide feel at home, and in 1908, Miss Orton’s own bungalow joined the scene, perhaps with the lovely smell of fresh-baked bread drifting from the kitchen.
But drama struck! Between 1910 and 1925, the original classroom and gymnasium tragically burned down-don’t worry, no ghosts haunt the grounds, just the memory of quick-thinking teachers and determined rebuilding. They didn’t give up: a cheerful social hall rose in their place and spirited learning went on.
The dormitory where you stand now is the last of the originals, honored on the National Register of Historic Places, and if these walls could talk, they’d spin tales of girls who became authors and pioneers, like Inez Asher, who grew up to write for books and television. So as you gaze up at the grand old building, imagine the laughter, ambition, and hope that once made these halls come alive. And remember-sometimes, the bravest classrooms aren’t the biggest ones, but the ones where someone first dared to dream!
