The Planetary Society, "dedicated to inspiring the public with the adventure and mystery of space exploration," has sold Greene & Greene's Sanborn House in Pasadena to Gaylaird and Gayle Christopher of the firm Architecture For Education for $1.7 million. The Sanborn House is considered a liminal work for the architects; it was built in 1903 on East Colorado Street (it moved later on to Catalina Avenue) and according to USC's archives its "plan became a preferred type for the Greenes’ later houses." A press release on the sale tells us Nobel Prize winning biophysicist Max Delbrück lived in the house, and that it was used as offices by crooked The Commons developer Stanley Sirotin, who embezzled millions before fleeing to England in the eighties. Transients moved in for a while until the Planetary Society rented the house to use as its offices. They bought it in 1989. Now they've sold the house "to raise funds to support space exploration projects." The nonprofit Society, founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan; Caltech professor emeritus Bruce Murray; and former AVCO and JPL engineer Louis Friedman, is working on a solar-powered spacecraft and in general "promoting grand and ambitious adventures, such as human missions to Mars." They'll hand the keys off to the architects in a ceremony on Friday.
· The Planetary Society [Official Site]
· Architecture For Education [Official Site]
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