Fenyes Estate, Beaux-Arts mansion in Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena, United States.
Fenyes Estate is a two-acre complex at 160-170 Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, on what was once called "Millionaires' Row". Its centrepiece is a two-story Beaux-Arts mansion designed by Robert D. Farquhar, completed in 1905 at a cost of $20,325. A 1911 addition by Sylvanus Marston of Marston & Van Pelt added a studio, conservatory and laboratory. The grounds also hold the 1915 Curtin House and a Swiss chalet-style building housing the Finnish Folk Art Museum.
In 1905 Adalbert Fenyes, a Hungarian entomologist and the first Pasadena doctor to use an X-ray machine, and his wife Eva Scott Muse Fenyes commissioned a two-story Beaux Arts house from architect Robert D. Farquhar, completed for $20,325. In 1911 Sylvanus Marston of Marston & Van Pelt added a studio, conservatory and laboratory. The estate entered the National Register of Historic Places on September 5, 1985.
Eva Scott Muse Fenyes, an artist and world traveler who met her husband Adalbert in Cairo, filled the mansion with her own paintings and sculptures. Her daughter Leonora Curtin, a linguist who lived among the Pueblo Indians, later inherited the house. Babsie Paloheimo, Leonora's daughter, married Finnish diplomat Yrjö Paloheimo in 1946, and the couple adopted four Finnish children who donated the estate to the Pasadena Museum of History in 1970.
The Pasadena Museum of History runs docent-led tours covering the Fenyes Mansion, the 1915 Curtin House and the Finnish Folk Art Museum with its gardens; tours run on set days, so confirm times and reserve ahead. The complex sits at 160-170 Orange Grove Boulevard, once part of Pasadena's "Millionaires' Row".
Yrjö Alfred Paloheimo, a Finnish diplomat whom Babsie Curtin married in 1946, served as Finland's Consul for the Southwest, and the mansion housed the consulate office for seventeen years. He also founded the Finnish Folk Art Museum in a Swiss chalet-style building on the grounds.
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