Category Archive

Author: Charles Bennett, First United Methodist Church Lay Leader and member of the Cal Pac Archives and History Team On March 17,1888, fifteen Methodists assembled in a brick building at Greenleaf Avenue and Hadley Street to organize the Methodist Episcopal Church of Whittier. Our congregation is the second-oldest in Whittier, predating city incorporation by a decade. The first church building dates from 1890 (photo above the title from the Whittier Historical Society’s collection). In 1904, the congregation outgrew that building, which was moved offsite and became a hospital and later an apartment building. A new building was constructed in 1904, …

The second oldest business in the City of Whittier is Rasmussen Iron Works. You probably know the business as Rasmussen Gas Logs & Grills which is prominently located on the southeast corner of Whittier Blvd. and Philadelphia St. Rasmus Rasmussen was an immigrant from Denmark. His family immigrated to the United States in 1878 when Rasmus was 9 years old. He grew up in Greenville Iowa and his family joined the First Friends Church. Rasmus started his own family in Greenville and had four children by 1906. He decided to try his luck in sunny Southern California in late 1906. …