The Pasadena Star-News Building

The Pasadena Star-News has been publishing in one form or another since 1883, and for much of the 20th century, the paper rolled off the presses at its building on Colorado Boulevard.

The paper moved into the solid Beaux-Arts structure in 1925 and stayed until the late 1990s, when Glabman’s Furniture moved into the space (you can catch a glimpse of the building with Glabman signage in 2007’s Transformers).

The building has also played a role in the history of radio in Southern California, once hosting a pair of radio towers that broadcast Star-News programming under the call sign KPSN. The first radio broadcast of the Rose Parade aired on KPSN in 1926, and famed underground FM station KPPC also used the towers to transmit their signal from their studios in the basement of the adjacent Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

From 2010 to 2017, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts - Los Angeles occupied four floors of this building, training culinary and patisserie and baking students in classical French cooking techniques. The school’s own restaurant, Technique, was the final step of the student’s “on campus” education before completing their externship prior to graduating as a cook. Technique was a student-run restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several years until the school closed in 2017.