The stained glass studio was founded in the Mott Alley section of downtown Los Angeles in the mid-1890s by English-born artist William Lees Judson and his three sons.

The Judson Studios building was named a Historic-Cultural Landmark by the City of Los Angeles in 1969 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

William Lees Judson was born in 1842 in Manchester, England,[3] and moved to the United States with his parents when he was ten years old.

[4] After serving four years with the Illinois volunteers during the American Civil War,[3][5] Judson studied art in New York and Paris.

[6] A 1937 radio program noted that it was "love at first sight" when Judson saw the Arroyo Seco, and the area became his home for the rest of his life.

[5] Soon after his arrival, Judson was at the forefront of the Arroyo Guild of Craftsmen, a group of artists, sculptors and architects who fueled Southern California's Arts and Crafts Movement.

In the late 1890s, he founded the Los Angeles College of Fine Arts at his home in Garvanza (the present location of Judson Studios).

In 1895, he persuaded three of his sons, Walter H., Lionel and Paul, to come to Los Angeles to join him in starting a stained glass studio.

[4] The original three-story Islamic-style building on the Garvanza site was used as the campus for the USC College of Fine Arts starting in 1901.

[8] Frequent visitors to the building included Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest A. Batchelder and Henry and Charles Greene.

Trained as a lawyer, Horace Judson retired from the active practice of law to continue the family's stained glass tradition.

"[14] As Southern California's population grew rapidly after World War II, there was a tremendous demand for church construction.

"[7] In 1973, Walter Judson noted that they preferred to train their own craftsmen and that it was difficult to find people fully interested in the craft: "They just want to play with it and then go off.

New techniques using fused glass had to be developed and a new facility had to be built in order to accomplish the task in nearby South Pasadena.