Old Pasadena, seven blocks of Colorado Boulevard, is one of the best-preserved late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century commercial districts in Southern California. Old Pasadena, the seven-block area along Colorado Boulevard between Pasadena Avenue and Marengo, was a commercial hub in the city's early decades that declined through the mid-twentieth century and was brought back by a historic preservation effort in the 1980s that turned its deteriorated brick buildings into shops, restaurants, and offices. The buildings you see around you date largely from the 1880s through the 1920s, when Pasadena was one of the wealthiest cities in California, a winter resort for Midwestern and Eastern millionaires who built enormous homes in the hills and patronized the arts and sciences.
The California Institute of Technology, three miles east, was founded in 1891 and has won more Nobel Prizes per faculty member than any other university in the world. Colorado Boulevard is the route of the Rose Parade, which has been held every New Year's Day since 1890, with elaborately decorated floats covered entirely in flowers, seeds, and other natural materials. The Rose Bowl stadium, a mile north, is the site of the annual game and has hosted five Super Bowls and two Olympic soccer finals.