Overview

Pasadena architect Myron H. Hunt (1868-1952) designed this Spanish Colonial Style residence for Margaret B. Fowler (1865-1936), a philanthropist who donated land and money to the George Junior Republic in Chino Hills, CA, and became an important director of the school for delinquent and troubled boys. After she died, her house, named by her "Casa Colina," became reused as the Casa Colina Convalescent Home for Crippled Children. (See "Casa Colina to be Convalescent Home," Junior Republic, vol. 26, no. 3, 03/1937, p. 36.)

Building History

Historian Kevin Starr wrote of the Fowler House: "For philanthropist Margaret Fowler, who lived in Chino in southwestern San Bernardino County near Ontario, Hunt designed a home in 1915 modeled on the architecture of the fishing villages of southern Italy--Tiled roof, a Successionist [sic] chimney extruding abruptly, bold unadorned white surfaces, oversized grilled windows, an outside staircase to the second story--which the American Architect hailed as distinctly Southern Californian in idiom." (See Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990], p. 198.)

PCAD id: 20253