Serve a static page using a single controller w/o making its own controller

I have the following folder structure wherein inside the "views" folder I have several static pages organized by their "parent":

Code:

my_project/
   application/
       views/
           pages/
               about.php
               about/
                   organization.php
                   history.php

I have the following controller to serve all the views that are direct children of "pages".

Code:

<?php
class Pages extends CI_Controller
{
   function __construct()
   {
       parent::__construct();
   }

   public function view($page = 'home')
   {
       if(!file_exists(APPPATH.'views/pages/'.$page.'.php'))
       {
           show_404();
       }

       $data['title'] = strtoupper(str_replace(["-", "–"], ' ', $page));
       $this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
       $this->load->view('pages/'.$page, $data);
       $this->load->view('templates/footer', $data);
   }
}

I have no problems linking to the top-level views under "pages" but when I traverse to a subfolder, it returns a 404.

htaccess for reference:

Code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /iacuc/

# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /iacuc/$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]

# Directs all EE web requests through the site index file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /iacuc/index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

route.php

PHP Code:

$controller_views = 'pages/view';
$route['default_controller'] = $controller_views;
$route['404_override'] = '';
$route['translate_uri_dashes'] = TRUE;

$route['pages/(:any)'] = $controller_views.'/$1';
$route['(:any)'] = $controller_views.'/$1'; 


What I want to achieve: 

From the folder structure above, I want to show "organization.php" and "history.php" through Pages::view() and calling them in my header as:

Code:

<a href='<?php echo base_url().'about/organization'; ?>'>Company Organzation</a>

Current workaround:

I made specific classes similar to Pages::view() for each of these subfolder views such as About::organization() and About::history().

I have no idea if I can serve subfolder static pages without resorting to the strict "controller/method" pattern but I hope you can help me with this. 

Currently there are no specific questions like mine online so I am looking forward to your advise.