When Jane Apostol’s The South Pasadena Public Library: Its First Hundred Years, 1895-1995 was published 15 years ago, it featured a panoramic photo of South Pasadena taken in 1893 by T.D. Keith, husband of Nellie Keith, the first City Librarian. Some have considered this to be the earliest known photo of the city that had just been incorporated in 1886. In the foreground Wynyate, the home of Donald Graham, the city’s first Mayor, and his wife, writer Margaret Collier Graham is shown along with many trees, several farmhouses, a few dirt roads –and lots of open space. Distinctly visible in the background are the Raymond Hotel and the San Gabriel Mountains. For the last few years a giant mural of Keith’s photograph has adorned the south wall in the South Pasadena City Hall.
Local history buff Larry McGrail of Glendon Way owns another early panoramic photo of South Pasadena in his collection that’s considerably older. It was commercially taken by Jarvis Studios of Pasadena and he believes it emanates from 1887 or 1888. McGrail is able to date his photograph because in the image the Opera House Building which opened in 1888 is still under construction.
About two years ago another early historical photo of South Pasadena emerged mysteriously in a box at the Huntington Library. It surpasses the Keith photo in age by more than five years and McGrail’s Jarvis photo by a year or so. Erin Chase, a Curatorial Assistant in the Rare Book Department of the Huntington Library, who grew up in South Pasadena, found it in a box of donated photographs and notified the South Pasadena Library According to her, it was removed from the manuscript collections decades ago and has no provenance. Larry McGrail believes that the Huntington’s newly-unearthed photo is even older than his Jarvis photo because there’s no sign of the Opera House. He calculates that the Huntington’s photo was taken sometime in 1887, at least six months earlier than his Jarvis photo. McGrail adds “The Huntington photograph is a magnificent find. The question now is an earlier photograph of South Pasadena exists. And that’s going to be a real long shot.”
The Friends of the South Pasadena Library recently had the Huntington’s photo enlarged to a 24 inch by 36 inch reproduction that’s now on display in the Library. It hangs for public viewing outside the Friends Book Store on the second floor. The Friends used memorial funds donated in honor of Mary Helen Wayne who was the South Pasadena City Librarian from 1972 to 1978.
Mrs. Wayne died on December 17, 2007 at age 94 in Portland, Oregon. She was born Mary Helen Collier in South Pasadena on May 9, 1913. She attended Occidental College and received a master's degree at Columbia University and married Robert D. Wayne in 1941. She spent World War II in South Carolina while he was in Europe. In 1945 the pair settled in South Pasadena and Robert joined the Cal Tech faculty. Mary Helen began working at the Library in the early 1950's and attended the USC School of Library Science, receiving a Master's Degree. She became a reference librarian and was later appointed City Librarian.
In 1974 Mary Helen co-wrote a bestselling book We Three Came West with her cousin Helen Hill Raitt, using letters written by their great-aunts Margaret Collier Graham and Eliza Jane (Jennie) Collier. She also sparked the committee that led to the award-winning South Pasadena 1888-1988: A Centennial History by Jane Apostol, published by the South Pasadena Public Library in 1987. The book was expanded in 2008 with a 20-year update and is still available for checkout and purchase at the Library.
