[conspire] Big estates

Tue Feb 19 19:51:24 PST 2019

Fascinating.
Matson Lines had a passenger ship "Lurline".
I suspect this is not a coincidence.

I recall that "Sunset Magazine" was published by "Lathan Lane Publishing"
Now I know why.

On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 7:50 PM 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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-- 

R "Texx" Woodworth
Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
"Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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