- Source: Mortimer Fleishhacker House
The Mortimer Fleishhacker House, also known as the Green Gables Estate, is a historic estate with an English manor house, built between 1911 and 1935, and located at 329 Albion Avenue in Woodside, California. The house has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since September 26, 1986. The property has been used to host family weddings, corporate retreats, and historic summits including a United Nations 20th-anniversary gala in 1965. The estate is now 74-acres in size.
The main house is two stories tall, and was created in an English manor-style with an imitation thatch roof, a gunite exterior, and consisting of ten bedrooms. The garden is Italian style and features four levels of terracing and a lily pond, a Roman reflecting pool, and a piano-shaped swimming pool. The estate was used and remained in the Fleishhacker family for five generations. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes rented a house on the property with her partner from March 2021 until November 2022.
History
= The Fleishhacker family
=Mortimer Fleishhacker Sr. (1866–1953) was an entrepreneur who co-founded (with his brother Herbert Fleishhacker) Great Western Power, which later became part of Pacific Gas and Electric and the City Electric Company. He served as a director of the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Temple Emanu-El. Fleishhacker also had a home at 2418 Pacific Avenue in San Francisco, California.
= Property and landscaping
=In 1911, Fleishhacker Sr. and his wife Bella Gerstle Fleishhacker (1875–1963), commissioned Charles Sumner Greene of the architectural firm Greene and Greene to design a country home for them on a 45-acre property. This was the largest of all Greene and Greene designs. The interior of the house was designed by Elsie de Wolfe and the San Francisco design house of Vickery, Atkins and Torrey. When designing the home, Greene also took in to account the design of the landscaping and the driveway.
The property's rolling green lawns were inspired by the Fountains Abbey of Studley Royal Park in 18th-century England, which Greene had visited in 1909. The garden has natural materials used and design elements that complement the landscape such as terraces, walls, arcades, balustrades, and planting urns. Over the years, the Fleishhacker family built out the estate, adding new structures and land.
Film appearances
The estate was filmed as the Martin family home in the 1999 film Bicentennial Man.
See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in San Mateo County, California
Herbert Fleishhacker
References
External links
Mortimer Fleishhacker House photographs from Columbia University Libraries
An Interview with Delia Ehrlich (granddaughter of Mortimer) from 640 Heritage Preservation Foundation
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Mortimer Fleishhacker House
- Fleishhacker
- Greene and Greene
- Elizabeth Holmes
- Aaron Fleishhacker
- Woodside, California
- Mother's Building
- Green Gables
- National Register of Historic Places listings in San Mateo County, California
- History of the Jews in San Francisco
