[conspire] Big estates

Tue Feb 19 10:07:18 PST 2019

 Rick, Thank you for expanding the list.  I know that your are a supporter of Filoli.

The building of the Carolands Chateau was described in one book.  The history of Hayes family in San Jose was described in another.   I will try to bring these to a future cabal.  

Here is a link to the Pan Pacific Expo  https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/historyculture/ppie.htm
Some pleasant day I will have to make a deliberate drive to see these places for myself. It is unfortunate that enormous sums were spent on amazing buildings that proved very expensive to maintain, not to mention deliberate neglect. 

    On Monday, February 18, 2019, 7:52:04 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  

 Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Two books about the Bay Area mentioned other manors built in the same
> era.  One was Ralston, now part of College of Notre Dame in Belmont.
> What I hadn't realized before was that there was more than just people
> with lots of money from gold mines, banks or rail roads.  The 1915
> Panama-Pacific International Exposition was a catalyst.  The 1% of the
> 1% of San Francisco needed to have appropriate places to host private
> parties for the visiting royalty from Europe or the old-money from the
> East Coast.

Yes, it was.  My favourite example fo that is Hakone Gardens in the
hills just west of Saratoga.  Isabel Stine was the surviving spouse of
Oliver C. Stine, who was a lawyer who made his fortune in post-Gold Rush
real estate and was an early Bohemian Club member.  He was the most
important backer/planner of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
and just barely survived to see it happen, leaving Isabel with a pile of
money and some passionate hobbies -- one of which was all matters
Japanese.  Ms. Stine adored the Japanese exhibits at the Exposition, 
so during the Exposition, she decided to have perment a permanent-class
traditional Japanese garden of her own, buying those 15 hilly acres in
1915 and sailing with her son to Japan in 1918, where they commissioned
one of the imperial gardeners to replicate a famous garden at what is
now a national park near Mt. Fuji
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji-Hakone-Izu_National_Park), and buiit
up _her_ Hakone (and hosted Japanese cultural events there) util she
sold it to another real etate baron, Charles Lee Tilden, first president
of the East Bay Regional Parks (and namesake of Tilden Park).  Tilden
continued to improve Stine's idea.  His family eventually (1961) sold
the site to a consortium of six Chinese-American couples, who kept it
going as long as they could, and passed it in 1966 to the City of
Saratoga, who (like the six families) found the maintenance costs
difficult, and passed it to private non-profit Hakone Foundation, set up
for that purpose.

Hakone Gardens is a gorgeous and inspiring place, that I recommend
highly for visits.  And yes, they do the tea ceremony.
http://www.hakone.com/

My own high school's (Menlo School's) main building, Douglass Hall, was
constructed in 1909, in a wdding-cake Renaissance Italian style, by
minng heiress Mary Payne, who'd inherited part of the Comstock Lode
silver fortune, and her husband Theodore Payne, who'd made a fortune as
owner of Payne Bolt Works in San Francisco.  After the 1906 earthquake,
they decided to move down to their 55 acres in Atherton next to Menlo
Park, and thus commissioned the 52-room mansion -- - which, notably, was
one of the very first reinforced-concrete buildings in California,
something it shared with Filoli.
https://www.pastheritage.org/Articles/PayneDouglass1.html

Mary Payne lived there for seven years (Theodore died before it was
finished), and sold it to inventor Leon Forrest Douglass in 1921.
Douglass was among other things inventor of colour film and an improved
photograph, and co-founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company (later
renamed RCA Victor), which business made him very rich and was
supposedly named for his wife Victoria.  The mansion he called Victoria
Manor.  He and his wife sold the property to Menlo School and College in
1945.

https://www.pastheritage.org/Articles/PayneDouglass2.html
http://www.gracyk.com/leon.shtml
https://intertique.com/Who%20was%20Leon%20Douglass.htm

(Last link claims that Menlo Park, CA was named for Thomas Edison's
research site in New Jersey.  That is a common misconception:  The Menlo
Park town considerably predated Edison's lab, and was named in the early
1860s by a pair of immigrants from Ireland after Menlough, County
Galway, Ireland.

There were _many_ other notable estates / mansions on the Penisula,
some of them still standing:

1.  Frederick Sharon's house.  When I was very young, the western half
of what is now Menlo Park ('Sharon Heights') was called the Sharon
Estate.  It was unfenced forest and wild lands that I used to enjoy
exploring on foot, and in the middle of it was an old, large building
that *I* thought of as a mansion.  This was a temporary house where
Frederick Sharon, son of Nevada Sen. William Sharon and heir to _his_
silver fortune.  The 32-room Craftsman-style _cottage_ I remember was
the place where Fred and Louise Sharon lived
(https://stdenisparish.org/pictures/site%20images/OldMansion.jpg) while
planning a truly stupendous mansion -- which was never built, because
Fred was a cocaine-head and died at age 56.  

2. 'Belmont', now named Ralston Hall Mansion and part of Notre Dame de
Namur University, built by  William Chapman Ralston, yet another
Comstock Lode bandit and founder of Bank of California.  This is the one
you mention.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralston_Hall

3.  Carolands Chateau, Hillsborough, built ca. 1912 in Beaux Arts style
by Harriett Pullman Carolan, of the Pullman Company family.  It was
derelict for quite a while during the 70s and 80s, but is now run by a
foundation and used for various special events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolands

4.  Uplands, banker Charles Templeton Crocker's estate in Hillsborough
-- grandson of railroad robber-baron Charles Crocker.  Now houses
Crystal Springs Uplands Schuol.

5.  El Cerrito, Hillsbourough, the oldest mansion on the Pensula,
started in the 1850s, and owned starting in 1906 by PG&E founder Eugene
de Sabla.  Razed and subdivided in 1930, but its iconic Japanese garden
remains and is sometimes open to the public during charitable events.

6.  Filoli, built based on a country home in Ireland by William Bourn,
owner of the Spring Valley Water Company, early supplier of water to San
Francisco, and named from Bourn's motto:  'Fight, love, live'.  Bourn
was a nasty piece of work who regularly required Spring Valley employees
to work for free on his estate.  After his 1936 death, it was bought be
William and Lurline Roth, part-owners of the Matson-Roth cruise-ship and
shipping company.

The mansion and its incredible gardens survive thanks to the
stubbornness and foresight of Lurline Roth, who worked tirelessly to
find an arrangement to keep the grounds open to the public and not just
disappear into private ownership or be broken up for subdivision.

7.  Linden Towers, Menlo Park, built by silver magnate James Flood, 43
roooms and the largest house west of the Rockies, completed 1880.
Demolished in 1934.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/12/matters-historical-the-gigantic-mansion-james-flood-built-in-menlo-park/

8.  Thurlow Lodge, Menlo Park, built/renovated by California governor, 
U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator Milton Latham, in 1872.  50 rooms.
(Originally built in 1864 by early robber baron William Eustace Barron.)
https://district.mpcsd.org/Page/143

A huge fraction of Menlo Park from the current civic centre to the
Sunset Publishing buildings was Latham's estate.  After passing through
a couple of hands, the US government built Dibble General Hospital on
the grounds (in 1943) to handle casualtiies from the expected American
invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.  After the war (1946), 29 of the
_280 total acres_ (the part exactly where Dibble had been) became Menlo
Park Civic Center, some became SRI International, and some was carved up
for subdivisions.  One of Latham's buildings, the Gatehouse, and its
elaborate outdoor fountain, still survive as part of MP Civic Center,
facing Ravenswood Road, plus some now-aged oak and monkey puzzle trees.

There are actually many others I'm not bothering to include.

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