The Hotel Carver is a three-story Victorian Building with full basement at 107 S. Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, California. It was built in the late 1880s as part of the Doty Block in the Old Pasadena district. According to sources at the Pasadena Museum of History, it originally was a showroom for a stage coach or carriage company. In later years it was a freight depot for the Pasadena and Los Angeles Railroad, which became part of the Pacific Electric Railway, and which is indicated by the faded "Pasadena and Los Angeles" sign on the South wall. In the early 1900s the building was converted to the Hotel Mikado and served the Japanese American community. In the 1940s it was purchased by Percy Carter and his family, and became Pasadena's first black-owned hotel. The name was changed to "The Hotel Carver," after George Washington Carver. It was directly across the street from the Hotel Green. The Green catered to prominent white clientele, while the Carver served African American clientele. It was similar to the Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles. The Blue Room was the dining room on the second floor and the basement held the nightclub called at one time The Onyx Club and later The Club Cobra where many famous, but unconfirmed musicians were reported to have played. In the 1950s, as part of a widening of Fair Oaks Avenue, the Victorian bay windows and turret on the southeast corner were removed from the building and similar structures were removed from other buildings to the north. In its later years, The Hotel Carver was operated by Percy Carter's sons, Percy Jr., Robert, and Littleton. In 1970 the hotel was sold to an owner who changed the building into art studios on the upper floors and the Pasadena Repertory Theatre under artist director Duane Waddell in a large space on the ground floor. In 1973, the Pasadena Repertory Theatre won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Director, Gill Dennis, and Best Screenplay, David Storey, for their production of In Celebration. Later productions included the world premiere of Academy Award nominated screenwriter Tom Rickman's play Balaam starring Academy Award nominee Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Brandon
