Was Montrose Really Laid Out in the Pattern of a Rose?

As I noted in previous columns, 12 years ago, when I wrote my book “Montrose,” there were three questions that remained unanswered when I submitted it to the publisher. In June of this year, I gave a presentation to the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley on what I called the “Mysteries of Montrose Origins.” This column summarizes my presentation of the third mystery: Was Montrose really laid out in the pattern of a rose?

I first heard this story in 2005 when Mike Lawler and I were writing our Arcadia Publishing book on La Crescenta. I loved it and wanted to make sure we included it in the book. Here’s what we wrote:

“After developers Holmes and Walton bought the lower section of the valley from the Briggs family in the early 1910s, they cleared the relatively flat ground of brush and large rocks and held a contest to name the community. Montrose was chosen and the streets were laid out in the fanciful pattern of a rose. The sweeping curves of the roads still confuse newcomers.”

When I was writing the book “Montrose,” I found some of the newspaper ads about the naming contest and learned that the name Montrose wasn’t chosen until the end of December 1912. I realized that this community was already graded and laid out in the circular pattern so unless the contest was a sham and the developers had already chosen the name, there’s no way Montrose could have been laid out in the pattern of a rose.

As I did promotional events for the book in 2013, I mentioned this regularly, and many people were upset. They want this story to be true. They even quoted “fanciful” back to me. So where did this story come from?

The first mention that I’ve found is in a book published in 1981called “Glendale Area History” in which the authors write, “Following the naming [contest], the subdividers laid out a street plan in the form of a rose and its petals, with circular streets leading from the broad curve of Montrose Avenue.”

This was written more than 60 years after Montrose was laid out and I haven’t found a single mention of this story between 1908 and 1974. Where did these authors get this information? I don’t think they made it up and they wrote it so authoritatively that they clearly believe this to be true. So did I up until 2012. All I can conclude is that at some point someone looked at a map and determined the street pattern sort of looks like a rose and, since the name is Montrose, that must have been intentional, and the story was passed on orally.

However, in all the advertisements and publicity stories about the development of Montrose there is not a single mention of laying the streets out in a pattern of a rose. Instead, they usually mentioned the “winding drives” and “the circular system of boulevards that give the place a park-like effect.”

After Montrose had opened in the summer of 1913, they wrote, “Montrose has been laid out along distinctly original lines. The monotonous checker-board effect which characterizes the ordinary subdivision has been carefully avoided. Beautiful curving driveways circle about a central park where the Montrose clubhouse is to be erected.” They clearly felt this layout was a major selling point.

The rose pattern story seems charming but put yourself in a buyer’s position 110 years ago. Would you really have bought a lot here because the community was sort of laid out in a pattern of a flower?

I have a theory, though, about why Walton chose these circular boulevards. These lots that Briggs had laid out in parallelogram shapes in the 1880s hadn’t been sold for close to 30 years. Walton and Walters were spending a lot of money bringing water to this area and they wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Montrose was not simply a renamed piece of La Crescenta.

If you look at a map of the area from before the building of the 210 Freeway, Montrose really stands out because of the circular roads. Which only look like a “rose and its petals” when looking at this through “Mont-rose colored” glasses.