Annandale, Pasadena, CA

Annandale is the hilly corner where Pasadena runs out at the Los Angeles line, with Eagle Rock over the ridge and San Rafael just to the east. It started as its own small community served by a Pacific Electric line, and it still sits a little apart from the rest of the city, tucked below West Colorado Boulevard. Most homes here went up between the 1920s and the late 1930s. Along Poppy Peak Drive and a few neighboring streets, a cluster of houses by master modern architects makes up the Poppy Peak Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2009. San Rafael Park on West Colorado has a small playground and picnic tables, and it's the neighborhood's own patch of green. For longer walks, the Lower Arroyo is a short drive east, with trails, the casting pond and the archery range along the canyon floor. For coffee and more choice, Old Pasadena is a short drive east over the Colorado Street Bridge, and Intelligentsia there has a big room with plenty of seats plus beer and wine later in the day. Almost everything takes a car. There's no grocery store inside, so errands usually mean the Ralphs on West Colorado in Old Pasadena or a run into Eagle Rock, and the hills turn a walk to the mailbox into exercise. Buses run on Colorado Boulevard. The upside of that isolation shows up at night, when the curving streets below Colorado go quiet and the modernist houses on Poppy Peak catch the last light.