Singer Building

Architect: Everett Phipps Babcock
Style: Spanish Colonial Revival
City: Los Angeles, CA

The Singer Building at 520 E. Colorado Boulevard was built in 1926 by architect Everett Phipps Babcock as a showroom for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, part of the wave of Spanish Colonial Revival commercial buildings that defined 1920s Pasadena. It has since been used for other commercial purposes.

the building

Roof and frieze. The building keeps its red tile roof, a stone frieze with a tiled pattern, and piers finished with decorative moldings—the Spanish Colonial Revival details that once framed a sewing-machine showroom.

the style

Spanish Colonial Revival was the fashionable idiom for Pasadena commercial buildings in the 1920s, and the Singer Building's red tile roof and tiled stone frieze are typical expressions of it.

the architect

Everett Phipps Babcock designed the Singer Building; it is his only surviving non-residential design.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 16, 1985.

nearby

Pasadena Playhouse 0.1 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1925
First Trust Building and Garage 0.1 mi · Mediterranean Vernacular · 1927
Odd Fellows Temple 0.2 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1918
Edmund Blinn House 0.2 mi · Prairie School · 1905
Miss Orton's Classical School for Girls 0.3 mi · Colonial Revival · 1900
Pasadena City Hall 0.3 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1927

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