Inception
Though the reason for establishing the small railroad is argued by historians, it is apparent to some that there was a need to provide some sort of public passenger service between the two communities. Others say that it was the whimsy of two particular, wealthy Altadenans to provide themselves with the refined means of a daily train ride to get themselves from home to office and back home in a style grander than that of a horse and buggy.
The service was originally organized as the Pasadena Railway Company in 1887 by investors John Woodbury, James Swartout, and the two prominent and wealthy Altadenans, Andrew McNally and Col. G. G. Green (aka) George Gill Green, mutual friends from with McNally from Chicago and Green from Woodbury, New Jersey.
Swartout had a large estate between New York Dr. and Boston St. near Maiden Lane which lies in a lower section of Altadena near the Pasadena border. He already owned the horse drawn Highland Railroad Company which accessed his property. Brothers John and Frederick Woodbury were the developers of the Altadena community located north of Pasadena against the San Gabriel Mountains. Frederick had a Ranch house near the Piedmont (Altadena Drive) and John had proposed building a mansion near the homes of McNally and Green.
Andrew McNally was the co-founder of the famed map making company Rand McNally in Chicago and had retired to Altadena in 1887. Green had made his fortunes in patent medicines and elixirs with his company based in Woodbury, New Jersey and was invited by McNally to move to Altadena in the same year. McNally and Green were heavily invested in the small railway, and each had a siding for his own private car to be pulled up alongside their properties which stood on either side of Santa Rosa Avenue from each other.
Read more about this topic: Los Angeles Terminal Railway
Famous quotes containing the word inception:
“Most of us don’t have mothers who blazed a trail for us—at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women’s movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums—what should they be? how should they act?—that became our uncertainties.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“... when one reflects on the books one never has written, and never may, though their schedules lie in the beautiful chirography which marks the inception of an unexpressed thought upon the pages of one’s notebook, one is aware, of any given idea, that the chances are against its ever being offered to one’s dearest readers.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)