Old Pasadena

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Old Pasadena" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Old Pasadena Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Old Pasadena (intersection Fair Oaks Ave and Colorado Blvd) and Metro Local bus, 2013
Show map of the Los Angeles metropolitan area Show map of California Show map of the United States
Location	Roughly bounded by Interstate 210, Fair Oaks, Raymond Aves., Arroyo Pkwy., Del Mar Blvd., and S.R. 134.
Coordinates	34°08′45″N 118°09′02″W / 34.145757°N 118.15047°W / 34.145757; -118.15047
NRHP reference No.	83001200
Added to NRHP	September 15, 1983

Old Pasadena, often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or simply Old Town, is the original commercial center of Pasadena, a city in California, United States, and had a latter-day revitalization after a period of decay.

Old Pasadena began as the center of a research hub where science and research institutions such as Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory and companies such as Beckman Instruments and Aerojet were founded. The large concentration of such companies in the area gave it the nickname "Athens of the West".^[1]

The area was also an artistic center, the home to Andy Warhol's West Coast museum debut and the first Marcel Duchamp retrospective, both at the Pasadena Art Museum (one of the earliest modern art museums in the country, now the Norton Simon Museum). Before that, Pasadena was a center of suffragist and pacifist movements and other liberal causes. By the late 1940s, the downtown area was blighted by flophouses, dive bars and pawn shops. It later became a hippie destination, with head shops, adult bookstores and massage parlors. By the late 1980s, Old Pasadena was undergoing a period of urban renewal and regeneration.^{[citation needed]}