For those of you that don't walk the neighborhood you can still catch a glimpse of this 98 year old historic home on your right just before you drive over the Hedding Street railroad bridge.

What you might glimpse is the oldest building on the Bellarmine campus called Berchmans Hall. It was a dorm for seniors who lived on campus (back in the day when Bellarmine was also a boarding school and the house hosted Christmas dinners & BBQs). It has also been a residence for staff and even an infirmary for the live in nurse during the 70 years it has been here (as of 2014). The building is named in honor of St. John Berchmans, a Jesuit seminarian who died in 1621.

The funny thing is that this house wasn't always called Berchmans Hall, and it wasn't built at this site.

The house was originally built for the Polhemus family. The architect was William E. Higgins and the house was built in 1916 at Stockton Avenue and Taylor (then called Polhemus Street). It stood there for 30 years before it was moved by Kelley Brothers to make way for the Salvation Army family store and dormitory around 1946.

The funny thing is...

Photo of the Polhemus home before the move in 1943. There is a large neighborhood World War II garden planted in the front yard near the corner of Stockton and Taylor (called Polhemus Street). http://bit.ly/1mTtJYE

This wasn't the original Polhemus house. This was the replacement home for the original Charles B. Polhemus home that had travelled thirteen thousand of miles from the East coast, around Cape Horn and into San Francisco Bay to be assembled at the corner of Taylor Street (then called Polhemus Street) and Stockton Avenue. Charles Polhemus owned a good chunk of the neighborhood (shaded purple area) in hope of profiting off the San Francisco to San Jose Railroad that he, Newhall and Donahue were building (before they sold it to Leland Stanford).

The original Polhemus house was one of a handful of homes that California's new military governor Commodore Stockton had prebuilt, shipped and assembled in 1849. Charles B. Polhemus (1818-1904) purchased and assembled the home in 1850 where it stood until it burned to the ground in 1916. Sadly I couldn't find any other surviving Commodore Stockton prebuilt homes, the last being at Newhall & Spring (right where the airport is today).

The Polhemus name is almost forgotten from the neighborhood's memory, but his impact was huge. His railroad allowed the neighborhood to prosper, and to easily ship out the bounty of our fruits and nuts to the nation by train instead of by boat or wagon.

If you walk West Taylor and look closely at the stamped street names on the curbs you might get lucky and find a reference to the original Polhemus Street name and laugh at the story of his moving houses.

Before World War I the concept of "Residence Parks" was emerging in America. The goal was to ensure that a neighborhood would reflect certain architecture standards and unfortunately also included racial restrictions on who could live in the neighborhood. What made the residence a "park" was the inclusion of public space being set aside for beautification, sidewalks, lighting, gateway landmarks and wide curved streets with European style roundabouts. This later became the covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&R) that is common in today's homeowner's associations.

In 1907 developer Lewis Hanchett hired famed John McLaren (Golden Gate Park, San Francisco) to design Hanchett Residence Park on the former 76 acre County Fairgrounds and Race Track called "Agricultural Park." The neighborhood is 17 blocks bordered by Race Street, Park Avenue, the Alameda and Hester Avenue. Residents who bought a lot were required to commission an architect that met Hanchett's design standards. The contract also required that no "business houses" would be permitted, that this was a residence only neighborhood. Famed T.S. Montgomery & Son were the real estate agents.

Most of the homes were built between 1915 to 1930 and residents could catch the Alameda Street Trolley or drive past these gateway pillars on Tillman and Martin avenues. Hanchett Residence Park was annexed into San Jose in 1925.

McLaren's use of gateways to designate something special inspired nearby Palm Haven to add their own set in 1913, and to restore them in 2006. San Jose's historical use of pillar gateways may have inspired San Jose State University's 1997 1ドル.5 million dollar Heritage Gateway campaign to erect eight beautiful entrances, although it probably didn't hurt that Stanford has a nice historical gateway too!

Currently the Tillman Gateway Pillars live on in Suhita Shirodkar's artbox mural on the utility box at Race and Park.

Hopefully the neighborhood's Hanchett Park Heritage Project can raise the 80,000ドル to recreate the grandiose Tillman pillars and maybe with enough support we can turn this dead end cul de sac into something John McLaren would be proud of. See previous post on the air raid siren and Peacenik Park idea.

The pocket park known as College Park is at the crosswalk of Hedding and Elm Street across from Bellarmine.

If you know it at all, you may know it as the loop you use to drop your son off at Bellarmine. Cars exit Hedding on Elm, drop of their student behind the cafeteria, take a left at the robotics shop, take another left at the Rugby/LaCross fields and then take a left on Elm where College Park's park is.

It's one of those nicely designed and landscaped sections that you think was always there. Most folks have no idea how it was urban blight left over from the Hedding Street bridge built over the railroad tracks. It took the vision of a top New York Life Insurance Salesman looking for a way to give back to his community to make it happen. It was one of those retirement projects that are so rare in our neighborhood because so many people move out of the area when they retire.

In 2002 , College Park resident Stan Ochs spent 3 years working hard to turn an empty desolate lot into a well manicured little park. Stan was an amazing community builder knocking door to door, raising 10,000,ドル getting a grant from then City Councilman Ken Yaeger, asking a local designer to design the park for free, working with Bellarmine, everything that was needed to overcome the inertia of making College Park a more attractive place Stan did.

In 2006 we lost him, but he isn't forgotten. His commitment to making our neighborhood a better one lives on. His wife Jan Ochs, along with neighborhood volunteers and students attending Bellarmine College Preparatory have managed to keep up on the landscaping.

Rest In Peace
Stanford T. Ochs
Jan. 2, 1941 - March 18, 2006

So what is Good Karma?

Good Karma was when a Silicon Valley engineer left startups in 2009 to help San Jose's working homeless population. Jim Gardner offered to repair bicycles free of charge so folks staying at InnVision's shelter (Julian Street and Hwy 87) would have reliable transportation to their job.

Fast forward to 2014 and see how big the movement has grown! Good Karma is now a full blown bike shop charity where you can buy, donate, volunteer to help the less fortunate with healthy free bicycle transportation, training and transitional employment.

Students looking for community service hours need to be 13 years or older to volunteer. Good Karma will teach you everything you need to know about repairing bicycles.

You'll be amazed at how shop manager Jim Affrunti juggles it all! They have a store with bicycles for all wages. They sell some basic riding gear and accessories (racks, locks, helmets). They have a full repair shop and can even let you rent a work bench if you want to work on your own bike. It has a very cool vibe and a diverse age and socio economic range!

If you visit there are three doors. The one in the parking lot is for the free clinics. The first big side door is for folks paying for bike repair and the second big side door is for folks shopping the store.

Some history on the property. Developer Barry Swenson is listed as donating the space in this old Del Monte warehouse cannery building on Sunol Street. A street named after Antonio Sunol who bought the property from Santa Clara Ohlone Mission Indian Roberto Balermino when this area was called Rancho de Los Coches (which included the entire Rose Garden area neighborhoods).

While it would be great to see this old cannery warehouse preserved as Good Karma's Community Center, I don't think it is likely. Good Karma will eventually have to relocate to make room for mid-town high density housing.

Too bad because the need for transitional employment and affordable housing is at an all time high. Not sure another high end gated condoplex with a Google or Apple bus stop like the nearby Elements is the only option for a diverse well balanced community. After all Good Karma is about the ethical choices that determines one's next existence. So stop by to buy, repair or donate your bike today and get your own little bit of Good Karma. Trust me, you'll feel better!



Good Karma Bikes
345 Sunol Street
San Jose, CA 95126
408-291-0501
www.GoodKarmaBikes.org

Donating my college bike of 27 years in hopes that it brings Good Karma to its next owner.

If you walk down the Alameda at the intersection of Villa Avenue at 1650 The Alameda you'll notice a fine mansion in all it's grandeur.

Designed by famed architect Julia Morgan (Hearst Castle) in 1908 and finished in 1910. The insides of the house features beautiful wood interiors with no expense spared. The owner James Henry Pierce was was president of Pacific Manufacturing, the largest supplier of wood products in California. His father's mill on The Alameda in Santa Clara supplied most of the wood used to build the homes in our early neighborhood.

Back in 2009 the Preservation Action Council of San Jose covered this house in their newsletter. The house is described as a Prairie style stucco exterior with a new-Georgian interior.

It is a great example of the many grand homes that used to line the Alameda and I'm happy to see that the current owners are honoring the history by keeping it in wonderful shape.

On a recent Spring walk through the Rose Garden I came across a sun dial and decided to dig into the history of this little known artifact tucked away in the North West corner of the gardens.

The first sun dial was a gift from Mrs. Charles C. Derby, the President of the Santa Clara County Rose Society and founder of the park in 1931.

All that remains is a beautiful concrete pedestal with the inscription "Gift in memory of Mrs Geo Carson" which features a sun dial on top.

Sun Dial's were a popular feature in many gardens at the time, as the concept of using your phone to dial Pacific Telephone and Telegraph for the time was just starting to take off.

Who was Mrs. Geo Carson?

Well the 1930's will tell you a lot about how married names went. Mrs. is the abbreviation of Mistress, which was the female counterpart to Mister, and is meant to translate as "wife of." Geo is the abbreviation for George.

So who was the wife of George Carson? Obviously a woman who was very much missed by her husband to the point of George wanting to mark the passage of time. The park's first love story?

I haven't found a definitive answer, but I believe Mrs. George Carson was the wife of Dr George Carson. Dr George Carson and his siblings James, Edward/Ellard , Mary, Hattie, Lulu and were the children of early San Jose pioneers George Carson and Nellie Carter.

The actual sun dial has been replaced many times over the years, moving from a traditional gnomon like the YMCA Hart Garden sundial to one that is more vandal resistant. The current version requires that you look inside the ring at where the vertical line intersects the shadow of the number that appears inside.

What's the story here?

Rumor among the freshman boys is that if you walk across the "B" at Bellarmine you won't graduate.

Any truth to it?

Probably not, but seeing a ropped off section of sidewalk in the heart of the Bellarmine campus does beg the question!

If you haven't walked through Bellarmine since they've built the new Lucas quad it is worth checking out. The place is looking less like a high school, and more like a college!

Bellarmine's motto of "Men for Others" and the fellowship they share keeps this an active, bustling part of our community.

Here is a an old photo of when the campus was still University of the Pacific and the heart of the College Park neighborhood.

The University named, Hedding, Taylor, Emory, Asbury, and McKendrie streets after Bishops who were leaders in Methodism and it's emphasis of helping the common man through service.

A tradition that I'm happy to see continue in earnest as the next generation of men learn to be of service to others and mindful to avoid stepping on the B!.

If you enjoy walking the neighborhood be sure to check out 1550 Alameda, between Pershing and Schiele. You'll find an oasis of water hidden in the Garden Alameda office complex.

You can grab a cup of coffee at the Palm Cafe and watch the morning ritual of an accountant feeding the "Duck of the Alameda." He is definitely the King of the green pond noisly chasing any would be rivals out.

Bonus points if you can find the hidden spot with the 2 fake geese. Funny that they were purchased in a hunting store not to attract migrant Canadian geese on their winter break, but to give walkers and office workers a quiet place to reflect.

Walking by the home at 744 Morse Street today you'd never know that the home is now 94 years old! Take a look at the 2005 photo below to see how the home looked back when it was only 85 years old!

The residence was built in 1920 at 744 Morse Street in the Rose Garden neighborhood. The original owner William Raymond Wilson was married to Mary Adele Wilson (daughter of San Jose Mayor Charles Martin) and died in an apparent suicide at the Capitola Wharf in 1931. Mr Whitney Wright lived there from 1949 to until his death in 2005. Neighborhood residents Mark DeMattei, David and Clyde LeBaron purchased the house with plans on tearing down and subdividing the lot. The trend at the time was to tear down an older home and build 3 or 4 homes on the same lot with a shared driveway (like the multiple house sets on Naglee near Park and on Hedding and Park).

At the time, there was much discussion about what should happen. The YMCA had decided to give up its plans of owning the whole block when it sold the YMCA mansion at Morse & Emory and was willing to trade some of its remaining empty lot for parking space behind the Wright residence.

The biggest issue was the large number of old growth Redwood, Oak and Elm trees that were going to be cut down and if the new homes would fit in.

Thankfully the neighbors spoke up, and a compromise was reached where the LeBarons and DeMattei Construction agreed to move and restore the residence to its former glory. The catch was that she'd have to shed most of the acreage to make room for 2 new homes and 22 YMCA parking spots.

Here is how the 2 new homes fit in today (2014) with the 744 Morse Wright Home on the far right.

I encourage folks walking down this street to appreciate the quality of the homes and how well they fit into the neighborhood. The only bummer you'll encounter is that the sidewalk ends before you reach Emory!

If you want a peek inside you can read about check out the Look i Loos article.

The early bird gets the eggs. The Rose Garden rule is be there before 10 AM, eight days before Easter!

The Rose Garden neighborhood association hosts it's yearly Easter Egg hunt in the gardens. It is a small neighborhood affair where parents bring treats to share and let the young kids race across the lawn looking for eggs.

Photo ops with the bunny and our own district 6 Pierluigi Oliverio who kindly emcees the event.

Show up at 10:01 and it's all over!

Resident Mr Meineke Muffler of 1531 West San Carlos Street, San Jose, CA 95126 is being held captive after complaining that his home and former place of employment were bulldozed to make room for the Buena Vista Midtown Senior Apartments. No word yet on if Core Builders will offer him a new home in the lobby when the building opens Summer 2014 for residents 55 and over.

I talked with the job site foreman who said Mr Meineke was being locked up for his own protection. The fear is that he might get stolen and sold for scrap or auctioned on ebay!

The Buena Vista Midtown Senior Center is @ 1535 West San Carlos Street, San Jose, CA 95126. It's a four story building with 95 units (1-2 bedroom, 598-977 Sq feet) with rent in the 556ドル to 1,137ドル range. The ground floor is being saved for retail. We could only hope for a new bowling alley for Mr Meineke, an avid bowler, and the other Fiesta residents to enjoy!

At the corner of Taylor street at @ 1700 The Alameda where Union Bank is you'll find a plaque embedded into the sidewalk. I walked past it for years without giving it more than a glance so today I decided to look into the history of it.

Who were the Dawsons? I was able to find an old 1914 picture of their home before it was torn down to build a bank.

Dr Dawson was a physician from Ohio that moved his wife Eloise Jones and family to San Jose. Like all early settlers to the area, planting a large backyard garden to grow your own fruits and vegetables was an important part of living in the neighborhood. The problem was that our good soil soon produced a bumper crop of fresh fruit and vegetables, more than could be passed off to friends and family!

Using his medical education and the growing understanding of how germ theory worked Dr Dawson spent his free time looking how he could preserve fresh fruit using the canning process that was in widespread use during the American Civil War (1861-1865) for feeding the troops.

Using the bounty of their backyard provided Dr Dawson canned the first 300 cases of peaches, apricots, pears and plums. The solution worked so well that Dr Dawson and his son decided to build a business around the innovation. The business was named the San Jose Fruit Packing Company.

Here is an early label from the San Jose Fruit Packing company. I love how it showcases the patriotic American Eagle engaged with the California Grizzly Bears over a can of fruit.

The ability to ship both canned and dried fruit using the recently connected transcontinental railroad lead to a fruit growing boom. Our entire neighborhood was soon planted with orchards. The Rose Garden park and neighborhood was at that time a large tract of Pear and Prune (Plum) trees.

Dawson's first plant was at Fifth and Julian Street where the Mi Pueblo grocery store is today. The business grew and became Calpak (1916) and later Del Monte (1967). Stockton Avenue was the epicenter of the canning industries including the famous Del MontePlant 51 at Bush Street & The Alameda in the St Leo/Cahill Park neighborhood. Our neighborhood's involvement in the fruit industry peaked just prior to WWII when San Jose, with its 18 canneries and 13 packing houses, was the world's largest canning and dried-fruit packing center.

Here is a 1950 era photo of the Bank of California building that was built on top of the Dawson residence. In 1960 the Polhemus cross street was renamed to Taylor street.

So next time you are in the grocery store and you see a can of Del Monte remind yourself how it all started here, in the Valley of Heart's delight.

We've all heard of Race Street Seafood, but did you know we also have chickens in our neighborhood?

You can check them out at the corner of Race Street and Garland Avenue at Middlebrook Gardens.

You can learn about the life cycle of the chicken thru the painted mural in front of the sidewalk and peek through the cut outs to see the hens.

If you are there during school hours you'll often catch St Leo school children in the garden learning about ecology and if they're lucky bringing home an egg.

If you aren't familiar with Middlebrook, take the time learn how this valuable neighborhood resource is educating and helping homeowners convert their yards into sustainable, edible gardens using many California native plants.

Theodore Lenzen Park is located at the corner of Lenzen and Stockton. The park is named after San Jose's first and most prolific architect with over 500 buildings (1863-1900s) to his name. The location is where the Lenzen brothers Theodore (architect), Jacob (contractor) and Michael (painter) developed the family's 23 acre Lenzen subdivision (both sides of Lenzen Avenue from the Alameda to Stockton) into what is now part of the Garden Alameda.

The park has a train motif to represent all the fruit and vegetable canning that shipped out by rail. Most of the plants here had their own railroad spurs out of their plants that would be switched at the College Park and San Jose Diridon (Cahill) train stations.

The park also commemorates the Muirson Label company that printed 5 million can labels a day. I like that the fence features examples of many of the can labels and try to imagine the regions top graphic designers designing the labels in a cool industrial space that was torn down for what is now the 245 affordable housing complex called the Cinnabar Commons.

For better and worse the public kids park continues San Jose's recent trend of not including public restrooms so be prepared to hike the long block to the Alameda businesses or future Whole Foods if your kids have to go. I'm not sure Theodore would have approved!

Theodore Lenzen is responsible for much of San Jose's early architecture including the Fredericksburg brewery, Santa Clara College and City Hall.

Sadly there are only 4 of the 36 homes left on this street that is now occupied by Downtown College Prep, Avalon on the Alameda (former Fredericksburg Brewery), San Jose Unified School district, J. Lohr Vineyards, County of Santa Clara County Health Department, Asiana Produce, Lenzen Square Apartments, La Bella Rosa Condos, Sweepco, DeBug and Lenzen Gardens Senior Housing. Theodore Lenzen's own home is now a parking lot.

At the corner of Park and Race Street in the Shasta Hanchett Park Neighborhood is our very own relic of WWII and the cold war - a vintage 1940's Air Raid Siren. Our neighborhood had moved up from St Leo's church bells to a full blown civil defense siren to be used to alert citizens about impending doom. This Air Raid Siren belonged to District 7 with the boundaries of Park Avenue, Auzerais Street, The Alameda and Spencer Street with the St Leo's School as HQ.

I found a sister siren still standing over at Frank M. Santana Park. It would be interesting to learn more about how these sirens were set off and what ties they had to the 1950's Almaden Air Radar Station that you can see standing at the top of Mount Umunhum.

Unfortunately it looks like all power and phone lines have been cut from this pole so I doubt the omni directional electro mechanical siren is tested anymore, but it would be great to hear from the residents in the 1970s as to what our Race Park siren sounded like as they practiced their duck & cover drills. You can watch the recreation of the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 to get a feel for the anxiety folks felt. Believe it or not, San Francisco's 109 air raid sirens are still tested every Tuesday at Noon for 15 seconds!

Turns out the neighborhood school kids still practice duck and cover drills, but this time it is for earthquakes!

If you look closely at the utility boxes that have sprung up around the air raid siren you'll notice another nod to the Shasta Hanchett Park neighborhood. A painted recreation of the historical gateway pillars to the neighborhood by artist Suhita Shirodkar.

I hope that this siren can be preserved and this dead end street turned into a neighborhood “Peacenik Park” for residents to enjoy for years to come.