The Other Side of the Family
Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 August 2015 04:31 Nick Spark Hits: 4319
A great deal of attention is always focused on the relationship between young Florence "Pancho" Barnes and her eccentric grandfather, Prof. Thaddeus Lowe. Lowe was after all a prodigious inventor who flew balloons during the Civil War for the Union Army, developed gas works and gas patents, and the builder of the Mount Lowe Railway. It's easy to forget that the other side of Pancho's family — her mother Florence was from the Philadelphia Main Line Dobbins family — was equally accomplished and celebrated in their time. Her grandfather Richard Dobbins was a famous architect who designed many of the buildings for the 1876 Centennial celebration. Caroline Dobbins, her grandmother, was a philanthropist who left much of her estate to endow CalTech. Their son (and Pancho's uncle) Horace was a shrewd investor and developer who became mayor of Pasadena. One of the things Horace is best known for, is building the "California Cycleway" in the late 1890's. An elevated wooden tollroad that ran through the heart of Pasadena, the Cycleway was a freeway for bicycles.
The cycleway was celebrated in a 1900 article as "an elevated perfectly adjusted road running from the heart of Pasadena to the Plaza of Los Angeles. In appearance it somewhat resembles the elevated road in New York, being apparently as high in places; but it is built of wood instead of iron..." The article concluded that the cycleway would have an income of approximately $20,000 a month "if half of the wheelmen in two cities patronize the road once a month". Unfortunately, these figures did not hold true, as the emergence of the automobile greatly decreased interest in the bicycle. In the end, the Cycleway was never completed, and portions of it were torn down to make way for commercial development. It's worth noting that four years after the "bicycle freeway" opened, a pair of bicycle mechanics named Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first men to perform powered flights in their home-built airplane!