A New Campus
In 1908, Throop began raising funds for a new campus, “The Greater Throop.”
With his daughter Marjorie Fleming Lloyd-Smith, Canadian-born lawyer Arthur Fleming gave over $5 million of their lumber fortune to Throop and Caltech, of which he served as a trustee from 1903 to 1937. Among their donations were the 22 acres of land that Throop moved onto in 1910, for which they paid $50,000. Fleming also served as president of the Pasadena Art Institute—now the Norton Simon Museum—and as a director of Southern California Edison.
Local architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, who had also designed portions of Mount Wilson Observatory, produced the first plan for Throop’s new campus, which extended from Wilson Avenue (foreground) to Holliston Avenue and from San Pasqual Street (left) to California Boulevard.
Hunt and Gray also designed Pasadena Hall, the first building on Throop’s new campus. It was named in honor of local donors, and adorned with reliefs by Alexander Stirling Calder, whose work also appears on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, and whose son Alexander Calder became well-known for his mobiles. For seven years, the building housed all of Throop’s classrooms, offices, and laboratories. Renamed Throop Hall in 1920, it was damaged by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake and demolished; its location is now the site of Caltech’s turtle pond.
Later, George Ellery Hale was impressed by the Spanish Colonial Revival style that New York architect Bertram Goodhue developed for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park. In 1916, Throop hired Bertram Goodhue to develop a bolder plan. Although most of Goodhue’s plan was eventually implemented, the domed Memorial Building at its center was never built; its intended location became the site of the Robert A. Millikan Memorial Library in 1967.