Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium Goes Up for Sale

The dazzlingly baroque Ambassador Auditorium , hidden amongst the condos that replaced Pasadena’s Ambassador College, has come up for sale . The 1,250-seat venue once hosted music luminaries like Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti and was praised as the “Carnegie Hall of the West.” The hall, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, has been impeccably maintained and restored to its full 1970s neoclassical glamour. The Pasadena Symphony orchestra has been producing concerts at the venue for the last decade and has already announced their 2024-2025 season which is set to begin on October 26.

Reminiscent of downtown’s Music Center, which opened a decade earlier, the building is supported by tall concrete and quartz aggregate columns surrounding a building clad in bronze glass and green granite, or rather Dark green Brazilian antique verde granite. Everything about the hall was extra, from the Turkish and Persian rose onyx covering the lobby walls (said to be the largest installation in the world) to the African shedua wood railings to the 24-carat gold leaf on the underside of the balcony and staircases.

Ambassador College was founded by evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong in 1947. Armstrong gained fame as a radio preacher with his show The World Tomorrow which moved to television in the 1950s and stayed on the air until 1994. Armstrong’s followers funded the $9.8 million dollar building designed by Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall, known for their high quality modernist corporate work, including the American Cement Building in MacArthur Park.

You can have your own mini Music Center, which sits on 3 acres and recently received $4 million in energy saving upgrades including a solar farm and LED lighting, for $45 million.