Casa Romantica

Casa Romantica, renamed Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens, is a nonprofit organization located in San Clemente, California that provides cultural programs for people of all ages. The organization was founded in 2002 by a charter of the City of San Clemente and is located at the historic home of Ole Hanson, who co-founded the City of San Clemente. Casa Romantica is listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Orange County, California, on December 27, 1991.MissionCasa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens is a non-profit 5013 organization and is the historic home of the founder of the City of San Clemente. Casa Romantica provides programs for all ages in arts, music, history, and horticulture and is a premier Southern California cultural center.HistoryConstruction of the HomeOle Hanson, a real estate developer and one-time mayor of Seattle, visited San Clemente in the early 1920s and chose the site to create his ideal community, a "Spanish Village by the Sea." On December 6, 1925, Hanson persuaded people who had driven from Los Angeles and the surrounding areas for a free chicken dinner and a sales pitch to buy more than 300 lots in what then was a desolate landscape remote from the rest of southern California. Hanson and co-founder H.H. Cotton devised San Clemente as one of the first master-planned cities in California, with town boundaries consisting of roughly five miles of coastline by one mile from the shores to the inland hills. In 1927, Hanson commissioned architect Carl Lindbom to design a home for his family that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Lindbom, who also designed La Casa Pacifica (the former Western White House), realized the construction of Hanson's California Dream home: a seven-bedroom, seven-bath house that included the finest materials and innovations in construction at that time. The Hanson family brought exotic furnishings, plants, and animals to the home, with colorful fish that filled the courtyard pool and several horses for beach rides.