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DEVELOPING A HISTORIC AREA

Newly built Paseo Alameda is in the middle of one of San Jose's most historic neighborhoods. Sunshine, Fruit and Flowers, an 1895 San Jose Mercury book on Santa Clara County, calls The Alameda "a wide, beautiful street adorned with ornamental trees and handsome, costly homes. Laid out by Franciscan Fathers it's one of San Jose's most fashionable residential streets." Horse-drawn trolleys connected Santa Clara with downtown San Jose. The original, ornate Victorian O'Connor Hospital stood at San Carlos and Race Sts near the race track. Only a few stately Victorian and Spanish revival homes remain, replaced by concrete-and-glass office buildings. Designating The Alameda a business district the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) restores existing historic buildings and develops new ones. Paseo Alameda occupies the former home of 3 breweries. Beer was important because untreated water often carried cholera. In 1869 Gottfried Frederick Kahlenberg built a 6-story brewery whose towers and turrets resembled a German castle. Closed for Prohibition it reopened in 1934, bottling Johnny Welland beer until 1955 when sold to St Louis' Greisdieck family, brewing Falstaff Beer until closing in 1971. On the Lenzen side of the old brewery the J Lohr Winery, opened in 1974, still operates.

Home of Martin Murphy Jr

The home of Irish immigrant Martin Murphy Jr and his wife Mary was Santa Clara County's first frame house, built by the first white family crossing the Sierra Nevada. Murphy helped rescue the Donner Party and supplied goods to Gold Rush miners on a ranch near Sutter's Fort in Sacramento. Already rich, to escape gold fever lawlessness Murphy settled in what is now Sunnyvale to raise wheat and cattle. The house, called Bay View for its unobstructed view of the San Francisco Bay, was built by Bangor, Maine shipwrights, dismantled and shipped around Cape Horn in 1850 to Murphy's 4800-acre ranch. Murphy's descendants lived there over a century. After Sunnyvale bought the house in 1951 the council, unwilling to pay for upkeep, debated its fate for 10 years and bulldozied it despite designation as a state historical landmark and Sunnyvale's historical society's efforts. Concrete block Parks and Recreation offices occupy the 8-acre Sunnyvale Rd site. Only a state historical landmark plaque remains.

House that Seeds Built

Except for air conditioning, Santa Clara's Queen Anne style Morse Mansion appears today as it did in 1892. Some smell Charles Copeland Morse's cigar smoke. Others smell old-fashioned perfume. Its ghosts are friendly, grateful their 5,500 SQF home didn't fall to neglect or bulldozing. First owner Morse began his rags to riches story walking across the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco in 1861. Morse prospected, painted houses and harvested hay, finally buying a seed business in 1877. Becoming rich as a Ferry-Morse Seed Co founder he spared no expense building his 12-room dream house and garden in 1892 featuring cupolas, stained glass, gingerbread, gables and a witches-hat turret. Morse's descendants lived there until the 1940s when it sank into disrepair. In the mid 1970s the house was sold for $100,000. The press dubbed the buyers angels as they raised money to repair wood-rot, polished, repaired and replaced what couldn't be repaired. In 1978 it was named a state historic landmark and listed on the National Historic Registry. Sold in 1981 it now houses a law firm.

Secrets of Niles' mystery house revealed

Niles plumber Gary Mills is not surprised to see strangers wandering through his house at H and Second Sts while he sips breakfast coffee.

(Footsteps)
Tourists. Mills gently tells them it's a private residence. "We thought this was a hotel," they say.
(Door slams)

If they knew the house's secrets. Mild-mannered Niles native Mills, owner of Mills Mechanical, won't tell them his neighbors call his 1885 Italianate Victorian the Niles Winchester Mystery House. When he bought the Victorian in 1985 it was 750 square feet with 3 tiny bedrooms. Now 3 times as big, with 7 bedrooms, it's still under construction.

(Hammering)
The Winchester Mystery House was built in 1884 when rifle fortune heir Sarah P Winchester bought the 4-acre property. She believed as long as she kept up the din of construction its ghosts would leave her alone.

(Chains rattling)
Winchester Mystery House doors have 10-ft dropoffs. Stairs and windows go nowhere. Not so Mills' house. Its construction will probably continue for many years. Mills works on a second-floor porch and a 60-ft basement tunnel to store his 10 classic cars, including a Triumph TR-4 and a Sunbeam Alpine.

(Horns honking)
Mills replaced or added 15 trees to his house. By the time he finished it wood would be extinct. While he likes the look and feel of wood, years of working on it soured him. If Mills builds another house it'll be stone. The house looks unfinished: open walls, plywood floors, bathrooms in progress. Antique furniture dealers know Mills and what he wants. Brushing away cobwebs, Mills built a lighted tunnel from the old basement to the old barn out back. At the barn end he'll install a car lift taking his cars to the surface. On the barn's outside wall are blades from an old windmill that pumped water. The pump house remains 30 ft west under the skull and crossbones flag of the children's fort.

(Cash register bell)
Mills works 12 - 14 hours a day on other people's houses, the rest of his time sleeping or working on his Money Pit. Mills laughs when asked about ghosts in this house once owned by a mortician. "No ghosts," he says. Wait. You hear that?
(Chains rattling)

Portrait of a haunting EERIE EVENTS AT SJ HOUSE SINCE FAMILY PUT UP MYSTERIOUS PAINTING

Stange events happen in this Shasta-Hanchett Craftsman bungalow with a carriage house out back. Jerry and Virginia Jacobsen couldn't wait to move in. Their realtor told them at the last minute: A painting in the basement must stay with the house. Strange, like house number 1331. Jerry Jacobsen walked across the bare wood floors and down the creaky, narrow staircase to the chilly basement. It was empty but for a large, framed painting leaning against a wall, covered with thick, brown dust. Jacobsen expected a portrait of the house in its early days. He cleared the dust, gently, carefully. This was no painting of the house. It was a woman dressed in red, with blue eyes and arched brows. Her dark brown hair, cascading in long waves, was draped in a white lace veil. Her gaze was so intense Jacobsen's wife found it disconcerting. He hung the painting on a nail at the bottom of the basement stairs.

Strange things happen ever since. Footsteps in the hallway when no one's there. A floodlight on the carriage house with a motion sensor illuminating on and off, only around midnight, when no movement is seen. A crashing sound in the hay loft. A pair of green eyes peering in the back window. The Jacobsens, both high-tech professionals who consider themselves reasonable, grounded people, tried to explain away the oddities to themselves and to their daughter, 9, and their son, 7, not prone to nonsense. The Jacobsens were open-minded about the possibility of restless spirits wandering the Earth. Surely there was no ghost in their house. Jacobsen studied the painting and the history of their new home. In curving brush strokes across the woman's dress was written, "Maria Von Hartman, 1971." The house was built in 1910 when the avenue with its palm trees made for a grand boulevard leading up to the horse race track, where Race St is now located. Jacobsen, a history buff, got no further. He hadn't even had time to mount his own collection of steamships on the living room walls, let alone answer questions that plagued him: Who was von Hartman? Why did the painting have to stay with the house? Do ghost stories even happen in these modern times?

A property records search led to the sister of one of the houses previous owners. His sister Harriet Jakovina, a painter, revealed a story of obsession and tragedy. Gilbert Wiens bought the house in 1976 and lived there 20 years until his untimely death. One pleasant spring morning he put on his jogging shorts, locked the front door and ran the Mercury News 10K race downtown. The instant he crossed the finish line he died of a massive heart attack. Hewlett-Packard engineer Wiens, 44, had cherished the painting even longer than the house. He found it at a 1972 Woodside art show he went to with Jakovina and her husband. Mesmerized, he returned to the portrait nearly a dozen times before buying it. At 20, looking for a wife, he fell in love with the painting, the girl he intended to be with, bought it as his spouse and told Jakovina's husband there was a spirit in that painting and that's why he bought it. A few years later Wiens married a woman who, with her long wavy hair and oval face, had a passing resemblance to the woman in the portrait. They moved into the house but divorced a few years later. Jakovina didn't know who the woman in the portrait was, only that Maria von Hartman was the artist and a friend of her mother's. Wiens, possessed by the painting, always hung it prominently on the same living room wall as a portrait of himself at 21. When Jakovina went to the house after her brother died she felt his lingering presence. He had been passionately attached to the house as well as to the painting. She knew the house and the painting, her brother and the woman, had to remain together. "That's the way we think of them, together," Jakovina said.

When the couple who bought the house from Jakovina moved in, the painting was on the mantel. For a few years they hung it in the study but "it was a painting whose eyes followed you," Brenda Davis said. "I didn't really like it." Restoring the house she took it off the wall and put it in the basement, forgetting it until they sold the house. Davis never noticed any strange or ghostly incidents during the 6 years she lived there. She described the house as a home with a distinct spirit, an old house with creaks and groans and always a good, warm feeling. She always felt the house took care of them. The current owners, intrigued by Wiens' story and his mysterious love, are still unsure what to believe. The light keeps flickering. Virginia Jacobsen refuses to set foot in the carriage house and the family cats don't go near it. Their son, who saw the green eyes, keeps his bedroom blinds drawn day and night. Jakovina wanted to assure the new owners that her brother's spirit in the house is a positive spirit. If they send her off to Goodwill there's trouble.

3-hour Saturday Motor Inn tour

The massive concrete Montgomery Hotel, built in 1911 for San Jose entrepreneur T S Montgomery, stood squarely in shadow at high noon, a small, if crumbling, piece of historic downtown San Jose. It moved 186 ft into sunshine and history books as the heaviest building ever transported on rubber wheels, making room for the Fairmont Hotel's planned expansion. "This breaks records and keeps our links to the past," Mayor Ron Gonzales told 300 people gathered at First and San Carlos Sts. Gonzales waving a checkered flag said, "Drivers, start your engines!" Diesel engines of 5 yellow hydraulic-jack trailers and tractors towing 2 smaller blue trailers carrying the hotel fired up. The hotel shivered, moved 10 ft and stopped. People waiting since 8 a m didn't notice. "My hair grows faster than this building moves," said men driving 50 miles to watch. People stood on newspaper racks and scaffolds and clung to lamp posts for a better view. A boy, 10, perched on his father's shoulders, had never seen a building being moved or a historical event happen. The $3 million, 3-hour move didn't damage the building. A computer monitoring the move kept signaling an alarm for an oil leak in the hydraulic jacks. Typical Silicon Valley computer bug. Nothing they can't handle.

The crowd grew antsy. Interest waned. As a project manager explained the 45-minute delay the engines restarted. Engineers finding the alarms false sent the 4,800-ton hotel on its way. Ron Byman, supposedly the only driver controlling joysticks and buttons on an electronic panel synchronizing the trailers, was joined by Chad Sauders, walking beside Byman using a second set of controls. With a few more short stops the hotel inched to its new spot, erupting crowd cheers and applause. Engineers estimated over 3 hours. Montgomery's square footprint was littered with neat square piles of timber, concrete rubble and debris and 7 sets of wide black tire tracks. From the roof of 12-story senior housing Casa del Pueblo next door it looked like a huge, square monster slithering away. The U-shaped building survived its slow-motion journey with renaissance and beaux-arts flourishes intact: its 6 balconies with balustrades and the brick-colored pergola on the building's handsome facade were undisturbed. "Drive's fine. We still beat our 3-hour estimate. I was on low gear all the way," Byman said, off to lunch after the unusual weekend drive. Even with the computer delay the hotel was ensconced in its new location by 12:30 p m, 3 hours after starting. Previous rain worried engineers because more ground moisture would cause problems.

In 1875 Mr. Collins who built the 480 South 3rd St corner lot house watered three palm trees he planted years before. The trees still stand in excellent health as documented in San Jose's 1975 resource inventory. City code qualifies trees over 50 years old for special protection.

Boomtown of old

The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum, village and park with huge, rugged, beautiful Almaden Quicksilver County Park nearby, is the mercury mine that made California's Gold Rush possible. Few native San Joseans and very few newcomers know their true, local roots. With lots to see here about mining town life from household items to period clothing, the real attractions are the mining tools, photos and the staff's blunt explanations about the mine's colorful characters, corporate politics and blatant racism. At its peak this was the world's richest mine of any sort, producing virtually all the mercury used by miners to extract gold from Sierra Nevada rivers and mountain veins. Gold jump-started the conquest of the American west, triggered huge migrations from Mexico and China and ensured California statehood. With no New Almaden there's no Gold Rush. 1,100 old hippies, rural types, techies, yuppies and working-class stiffs, live in this an old-fashioned community where everybody knows everything and then some, a community you can walk around in 1/2 hour and can't find anywhere else anymore. New Almaden prizes its history and guards its present. People are arrested for new, out-of-character windows. Most of the homes are small cottages governed by strict historic preservation rules.

San Jose likes parks and outdoor activities more than all the elitist, expensive downtown redevelopment. Many of the park's hiking trails are 6 - 10 feet wide because they once were wagon routes for hauling cinnabar, the red rock containing mercury. Views: Loma Prieta and Gilroy to the south. To the north, Moffett Field and the heart of Silicon Valley. Huge, opulent houses creep up the hills toward New Almaden. A monster house just above his little town without official word to the community association worries about townspeople marching up to it with torches like in the movie Frankenstein.

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