Altadena Heritage Architectural Database

Altadena Heritage was founded in the mid-1980s when many beautiful old homes and mansions were being demolished and replaced with tract developments — imperiling our architectural heritage. Before you can preserve important architecture, it is necessary to know what you have. Altadena Heritage’s very first big project in the late 1980s was to conduct a “windshield survey” of all of Altadena’s architectural stock.

In 2009 Altadena Heritage received an $11,000 grant from Edison to expand the architectural database.

A database of all pre-World War II homes and structures, and other significant buildings was created, augmented by extensive research on architects and builders. It was the first such digital database in California.

In 2009, we received a grant from Southern California Edison, much of which went into migrating the data to a modern platform. In 2014, we implemented a preliminary online user interface to the new Altadena Heritage Architectural Database (AHAD), making the original survey data available through the Web.

In 2018, we completed a redesign of AHAD’s user interface, which begins the open-ended process of updating the data itself as a continuation of our work to preserve Altadena’s rich architectural heritage. You can access all the addresses comprising our original 1988 survey here:

Altadena Heritage Architectural Database

If you have any questions or corrections to report, please email us altadenaheritage@gmail.com.