The Brief

Behind a set of towering metal gates, a 3.4-acre site in Glendale that was once a pioneering mental health facility run by women for women has laid in decay for years.

Now, the city has approved a plan — estimated to cost nearly $8 million — to turn a portion of the Rockhaven Sanitarium site into a mental health museum.

The plans call for renovating the part of the property known as the Pines Cottage, built in 1931, to preserve its architecture, restore the surrounding courtyards and landscaping and make it a place where people can gather.

Conceptual drawings for the site envision rooms, many of them staged with period-specific furniture, that tell the stories of the women who lived there.

“We want the site to be alive and active, and we want things that are going to draw people to come there again and again and again,” Glendale City Council member Dan Brotman said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Local preservationists have said the move by the City Council is an important step toward opening the site for public use and bringing the history of the place back into view.

But there are some concerns that the design plans would strip the buildings of architectural details and character.

Undated historical photos of Rockhaven grounds

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SWA Group presentation

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Compassionate mental health care 

When it opened in the 1920s, Rockhaven was groundbreaking for its time because it was owned and run by women and offered holistic care on beautiful grounds.

Over the years, the facility treated Hollywood types, including Billie Burke who played Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz and Marilyn Monroe's mother, Gladys Baker (also known as Gladys Monroe), who a tour guide called the sanitarium's “most infamous resident.”

“There were a couple of times that she attempted to escape," Joanna Linkchorst, president and co-founder of Friends of Rockhaven, told LAist in 2015. "She managed to get out a couple of times. One of them, she tied her bedsheets together and made a dramatic escape through a tiny window in her closet."

The psychiatric nurse who founded Rockhaven, Agnes Richards, was an innovator when it came to compassionate mental health care, historians have pointed out. Richards was appalled by the conditions she’d seen while working at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino and wanted to offer an alternative to the carceral mental “asylums” of the time where women were known to have been abused.

Rockhaven Sanitarium founder Agnes Richards.

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So she resolved to do things differently.

In contrast to some of the gothic dormitories that dominated state hospitals of the time, Rockhaven had stand-alone cottages, called The Willows and The Coulter, that opened up to the outside. Patients were encouraged to venture outdoors and enjoy the oak trees and meticulously landscaped rose gardens.

Eileen V. Wallis, a history professor at Cal Poly Pomona, said Richards worked to de-stigmatize mental health conditions, referring to those under her care at Rockhaven as “ladies” rather than “patients.”

Wallis, a Glendale resident who wrote a book that explores the history of mental health care in California, said Rockhaven was a safe place for its residents to live healthy lives. With its focus on dignified, holistic care for women, Rockhaven patients gardened on the grounds and dined together in home-like settings.

“It was really sort of compelling both in terms of just being very different and distinct from what the vast majority of mental health care looked like in the early 20th Century,” Wallis said. “But also being quite deliberately and self-consciously gendered.”

She said it’s been frustrating seeing the property closed off to the public for so long.

A time capsule 

The facility has been closed since the early 2000s. The saga to preserve Rockhaven and reopen it to the public as a museum goes back more than a decade.

Linkchorst has been working for much of that time to save the place from demolition and neglect. Back when the public could get onto the property, Linkchorst led tours of the property and its 15 structures, bringing Agnes Richards’ story to life, pointing out architectural details and retelling at least a couple ghost stories.

There’s a 1921 statue called “Reclining Nude” in the middle of the Rockhaven property that’s become a mascot for the place. The statue was created by one of California’s oldest ceramics manufacturers, Gladding McBean.

Linkchorst dubbed it “The Lady of Rockhaven."

The Lady of Rockhaven

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Maya Sugarman / KPCC

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She said she’s happy to see the city inching toward reopening the site to the public, but she’s concerned that the approved design plans would remove features like colorful 1930s bathroom tile and other era-specific details that make it, in her words, “a time capsule.”

“I just so desperately want to not touch this, because when it’s gone, it’s gone,” she said.

The Rockhurst site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Eventually, Linkchorst said, she hopes to bring young women back onto the property for tours. She said there are important lessons they could learn about mental health, and how people living with mental illness can be treated humanely.

Photos of Rockhaven as it is today.

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SWA presentation

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“It gets hard for a lot of people,” she said. “And the way that it was handled for these ladies is they were removed from their situation, treated with dignity and then allowed to go home stronger and able to handle it.”

What’s next for Rockhaven 

On Tuesday, the Glendale City Council unanimously approved plans to get what’s known as The Pines building museum-ready. The motion directs city staff and the design firm SWA Group to proceed with construction drawings and a bid package.

SWA design drawings of the Pines courtyard rehabilitation.

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SWA Group

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The development comes about three years after state Sen. Anthony Portantino secured $8 million from the state to turn the property into a mental health museum. The city bought the property in 2008 for $8.25 million.

“Converting the Rockhaven grounds into a museum dedicated to the legacy of Agnes Richards, women’s history, and telling the story of compassionate care for women with mental health challenges ensures that we honor the historical significance of this site and the legacy of those who created it,” Portantino said in 2021.

The project must be completed by March 2026 in order to not lose the state funds.

Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios. I'm not entirely sure how to square all this bad news with my own good news, which is that I saw more terrific new movies this year than I have any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.

1. Sirāt

The best new movie I saw this year is a breakthrough work from a gifted Spanish filmmaker named Oliver Laxe. It's a nail-biting survival thriller, set in the desert of southern Morocco during what feels like the end-times. It's a little Mad Max, a little Wages of Fear, and all in all, the most exhilarating and devastating two hours I experienced in a theater this year. Sirāt also features the year's best original score, composed by the electronic musician Kangding Ray.

2. One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson's much-loved, much-debated reimagining of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland is an exuberant mash-up of action-thriller and political satire. One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his best and funniest performances as an aging revolutionary drawn back into the field. He leads an ensemble that includes Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and the terrific discovery, Chase Infiniti.

3. Caught by the Tides

Caught by the Tides is an unclassifiable hybrid of fiction and nonfiction from the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Drawn from a mix of archival footage and newly shot material, it's a one-of-a-kind portrait of the myriad transformations that China has gone through over the past two decades.

4. Resurrection

Resurrection, another structurally bold Chinese title, is a bit like an Avatar movie for film buffs. Placing us in the head of a shapeshifting protagonist, the director, Bi Gan, takes us on a gorgeous, dreamlike odyssey through various cinema genres, from historical spy drama to vampire thriller.

5. My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow

My No. 5 movie is the year's best documentary: My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, from the director Julia Loktev. It's a sprawling yet intimate portrait of several Russian independent journalists in the harrowing months leading up to President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a portrait of anti-authoritarian resistance, it pairs nicely with my No. 6 movie.

6. The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is an emotionally rich, sneakily funny and continually surprising drama from the director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in 1977, it lays bare the personal cost of dissidence during Brazil's military dictatorship.

7. Sound of Falling

Although not a horror film, exactly, this German drama qualifies as the best and spookiest haunted-house movie I've seen this year. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling teases out the connections among four generations of girls and young women who have passed through the same remote farmhouse.

8. April

April, from the director Dea Kulumbegashvili, is a tough, bleak, but utterly hypnotic portrait of a skilled OB-GYN trying to provide health care for women in a conservative East Georgian village. It may be set far from the U.S., but the difficulties these women face would resonate in any setting.

9. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Directed by Rungano Nyoni, this Zambian film is a subtly mesmerizing drama about a death that takes place in a middle-class household, setting off a chain of dark revelations that threaten to tear a family apart.

10. It Was Just an Accident

It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a shattering moral thriller from the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. It centers on a group of former political prisoners who are given a rare chance at retribution. In the past, Panahi has been a prisoner in Iran himself, and earlier this month, the government sentenced the director in absentia to a year in prison. I hope that Panahi never sees the inside of a jail cell again, and that his movie is seen as far and wide as possible.
Copyright 2025 NPR

In the wake of the Eaton Fire, Altadena and Pasadena’s music community have really shown up to support fire survivors, especially fellow musicians who lost instruments and record collections.

That effort continues this weekend with a special donation concert at a Pasadena record store, with the aim of getting vinyl records back in the hands of survivors who lost their collections.

“You know, our name is Healing Force of the Universe, and I think that gives me a pretty clear direction… especially after the fires,” said Austin Manuel, founder of Pasadena record store, where Sunday’s show will be held.

The record donation effort is the brainchild of musician Brandon Jay, who founded the nonprofit Altadena Musicians after losing his home and almost all of his family’s instruments in the Eaton Fire. Through Altadena Musicians’s donation and registry platform, Jay said he and his partners have helped some 1,200 fire survivors get their music instruments back.

Brandon Jay.

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Robert Garrova

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Now, that effort has fanned out to restoring vinyl record collections.

“All of that stuff evaporated for thousands of people,” Jay said. “Look at your own record collection and be like, ‘Wow, what if that whole thing disappeared?’”

You might know Jay from several bands over the years, including Lutefisk, a 1990s alt-rock band based in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, composed music for TV shows, including Orange is the New Black and Weeds.

Jay plans to play some holiday tunes at Sunday's record donation show (which LAist is the media sponsor), along with fellow musician Daniel Brummel of Sanglorians. Brummel, who was also a founding member of Pasadena’s indie-rock sensation Ozma, said he was grateful to Jay for his fire recovery work and to Manuel for making Healing Force available for shows like this.

Brummel, who came close to losing his own home in the Eaton Fire, recalled a show he played at Healing Force back in March.

Ryen Slegr (left) and Daniel Brummel perform with their band, Ozma, on the 2014 Weezer Cruise.

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Even Keel Imagery

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“The trauma of the fires was still really fresh,” Brummel said. After playing a cover of Rufus Wainwright’s “Going to a Town,” that night — which includes the lyrics “I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down” — Brummel said his neighbors in the audience told him the rendition hit them hard. “It felt really powerful. And without that space, it just wouldn’t have occurred.”

Details

Healing Force of the Universe Record Donation Show
Featuring: Quasar (aka Brandon Jay), Sanglorians (Daniel Brummel) and The Acrylic.
Sunday, Dec. 14; 2 to 5 p.m.
1200 E. Walnut St., Pasadena
Tickets are $15 or you can donate 5 or more records at the door. More info here.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."