Casa Verdugo Restaurant in Glendale

Casa Verdugo was a restaurant in the area of Los Angeles County that was later to become the city of Glendale. The restaurant was a distant stop on the Pacific Electric Railway car, a trolley that ran from downtown Los Angeles up the main thoroughfare of the area that became known as Brand Boulevard.

The restaurant was intended to give diners a romantic experience of early California – something that tourist would seek out after reading popular novels like “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson.
Casa Verdugo was originally housed in what was known as the “Sepulveda Adobe”. Rafaela and Fernando Sepulveda were the original owners of the adobe home. The structure was later sold and fashioned into a restaurant, but the new owners mistakenly named it for the Verdugo family, another of the prominent local families from the historical California Rancho period.
This original, authentic adobe was eventually replaced with a newer one just a couple of hundred yards away when Brand Boulevard was extended further up the hillside north of Mountain Street.

The original adobe structure had tables under wide verandas and pergolas surrounding a corral where guests could view Mexican music and dance performances.
The owner of Casa Verdugo had a white dog that became a minor celebrity with the frequent visitors.
An 1911 article from “The Clutch”, a magazine for automobile enthusiasts, described the trip from Echo Park the Casa Verdugo with “wide views of the smiling valleys and of the piled-up mountain ranges, through fragrant orchards and blossoming berry fields.”
The restaurant added to the visitor’s experience by maintaining a large cactus garden filled with specimens from the American Southwest.
Delegates from all over the nation gathered in downtown Los Angeles in 1907 for their annual convention, and one of the highlights was a trip to Glendale and the Casa Verdugo. On May 6, thousands of Shriners boarded the new Red Car to Glendale, and rode past Glendale homes displaying flags and bunting in honor of Shriner’s Day.
Railroad officials estimated that 5000 Shriners came to Glendale that day, and more than half of them dined at Casa Verdugo.

Progress dictated that the restaurant be moved a second time to its third and final location just a short distance away. This structure is still in use as a private home on the southwest corner of Louise and Randolph streets in Glendale.

A postcard, c. 1910
The same structure, now a private home, as it appears today. If you're interested in re-living the experience of this famed Glendale restaurant, the Glendale Historical Society is recreating an evening of food and fun in June of 2009. More information can be found at the following link:
http://www.glendalehistorical.org/events.html