Armenians of Pasadena

ADS 2018 Pilot project

The Armenian community of Pasadena is part of the larger community of Los Angeles, which includes areas such as Glendale, Hollywood, Montebello and San Fernando Valley.  The first mention of Armenians in Pasadena is in a newspaper article published in 1895, about a man named Dr. Milchonians, a guest speaker at the First Congregational Church.  The first Armenian-owned business to open in Pasadena was the “Pashgian Brothers rugs and draperies”, established in 1903-1904. 

After WWI, many survivors of the Genocide settled in Pasadena.  By 1923, there were an estimated 2,500-3,000 Armenians living in Pasadena. The community started to take shape, especially when 20 young Armenians founded the Varoujan Club in 1924, with the aim of organising cultural and social events, and when the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) opened a branch in Pasadena in the 1920s. 

Most Armenians originally settled near the corner of Allen Avenue and Washington Boulevard, where still many community organisations and properties are located today.

The majority of those arriving with the initial wave of migration to Pasadena were Protestants from Hadjin and other towns in Cilicia.  The next large wave of Armenian migration came during the Lebanese Civil War beginning in 1975. Today, Armenians from Lebanon and Syria are said to make up the largest proportion of the community in Pasadena. Armenians from Armenia began to arrive in Pasadena in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

The community has several churches that were built by Evangelical and Apostolic Armenians.  The Armenian Cilicia Evangelical Church, founded in 1922 was established by Armenians from Cilicia (Ottoman Empire), who found refuge in Pasadena.  The Armenian Evangelical Brethren Church began as a small Bible reading group set up in 1922, which eventually developed into a fully functioning church. St. Gregory Church is the older of the two Armenian Apostolic churches in Pasadena. Established in 1947, St. Gregory is a parish under the jurisdiction of the Western Diocese of Holy Etchmiadzin. It caters largely to the descendants of the generation of Western Armenians, who settled in Pasadena decades or even a century ago. St. Sarkis Church, under the Prelacy of the See of Cilicia, is a newer parish founded in 1985. The congregation is predominantly made of more recent immigrants.  

There are a number of Armenian schools in Pasadena, including the non-affiliated Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School, established in 1980, with a mission to provide “a Christ centred education within an Armenian heritage and cultural programs”; St. Gregory Alfred & Marguerite Hovsepian School, founded in 1984, to cater to the needs of the large wave of Armenian migrants from the Middle East; the Levon and Hasmig Tavlian Armenian Preschool, established in 1992, affiliated with the St Sarkis Church; and the AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manoukian High School, established in 2006.