Brand Park

Leslie C. Brand — the man usually called the father of modern Glendale — built El Miradero between 1903 and 1904 at the foot of the Verdugo Mountains, and named it for a high place with a long view. His brother-in-law Nathaniel Dryden designed it in a Saracen style, modelled on an East Indian pavilion Brand had seen at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; its towers, minarets and scalloped arches earned it the local name of Brand's Castle. Brand died in 1925, leaving the house and grounds to the City of Glendale on condition that they become a public park and library after his wife's death. She died in 1945, the architect Raymond Jones converted the house, and the Brand Library opened in 1956. Staff and visitors describe Brand still on the stairs, particularly around the tower that held his private study, and a voice calling a single syllable — heard variously as "Joe" or "Go." A trail behind the library climbs to the Brand family cemetery and its stone pyramid tomb, where he is buried, and higher still to what looks like a small stone watchtower. The 31-acre park is what remains publicly accessible of a 666-acre estate.