A restaurant renovating a building along an alignment of Route 66 in Pasadena, California, found a long-forgotten facade. The restaurant plans to preserve it and has “some cool plans in the works.”
Howlin’ Ray’s, which serves Nashville hot chicken, was doing a face-lift on the building at 800 Arroyo Parkway (aka Route 66) when it uncovered a vintage Adohr Milk Farms facade, along with intact neon lighting tubes, reported NBC Los Angeles.
The dairy was founded by Merritt and Rhoda Rindge Adamson in 1916 in nearby Tarzana, California. The facade is believed to date to the 1920s.
The Museum of Neon Art, based in nearby Glendale, California, posted these photos and more information:
Here’s Mike Frankovich’s video about the recent facade reveal:
Esotouric, an L.A.-based tour company, asked the restaurant directly on Twitter whether the facade would be preserved. It received a reply in the affirmative:
According to a 22-year-old article from the Los Angeles Times:
In 1916, Merritt Huntley Adamson Sr. and his heiress wife, Rhoda Rindge Adamson, whose parents were the last owners of the vast Spanish land grant in Malibu, founded a state-of-the-art dairy in Tarzana called Adohr Farms; Adohr was Rhoda spelled backward. […]
In 1947, Adohr Farms moved from Tarzana to Camarillo, and two years later Adamson shot himself to death, apparently despondent over his failing health after a stroke. […]
By 1966, the price of cattle feed had skyrocketed and the Adamson trustees were forced to sell Adohr Farms to the Southland Corp., which would change hands again more than two decades later. Making room for the Ward Plaza shopping center and the Westview Park subdivision, the dairy was torn down in 1969.
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Found on the internet:
“Merritt Adamson established the large Adohr Farms dairy in 1916, at Ventura Boulevard and Lindley Avenue. It was named for his wife Rhoda, spelled backwards. His spread of Guernsey milk cows sprawled on both sides of Ventura Blvd. through World War II, but in 1948 — the year before Adamson died, encroaching suburbia squeezed Adohr Farms out of Tarzana.
Land was slowly sold during the Great Depression and in 1948 the remaining 500 acres were sold to developers when the dairy farm moved to Camarillo. The Camarillo farm was sold for the Westview Park subdivision in 1969. Only the Adohr milkmaid statue remains in front of the old Adohr Farms Creamery (now Saputo Dairy Foods) plant in Tulare, CA.”
The idea of people drinking really full cream milk from Guernsey (and Jersey) cows would have today’s Puritan low fat milk faddists spluttering over their skinny lattes. When a schoolboy in the UK, I delivered milk
at weekends – to earn pocket money. My treat part of the way along the round was a half (UK) pint of gold top Jersey milk. The dairy’s milk came from Daw’s Creamery, six miles away, delivered by lorry very early each morning – the pint and half pint bottles in heavy steel wire or pressed-steel-frame crates, and the bottles had glass about twice today’s thickness. . The creamery’s chimney – with its name spelled down its full height – was a local landmark. Milk from the creamery also went some 200 miles, in special railway tankers, to London daily. The milk trains were hauled by express passenger steam locomotives, and travelled at express speeds.
Wow, great facade. It’s cool that they decided to keep it!