Filoli

Woodside, CA, May 15, 2012:  South of San Francisco, between Half Moon Bay on the Pacific and Palo Alto on the San Francisco Bay, lies Filoli (1917), the country estate of William Bowers Bourn II, who inherited the largest gold mine in California, was among the organizers of the Pacific Gas and Electric company and owned the water supply of San Francisco.  The mansion is Georgian Revival albeit with a tile California roof.

Filoli as seen from the highway vista point.

Filoli views Crystal Springs Reservoir to the north.

The U-shaped mansion creates this entrance courtyard which was tented for parties.

Filoli's claim to fame is its 16-acre garden, designed by Bruce Porter with architectural elements by Arthur Brown Jr. and plantings by Isabella Worn.  The front, back and north side of the mansion feature Georgian terraces; the south side is an English Renaissance garden.  Ms Worn continued to work in the garden after 1936 when Mr. and Mrs. William P. Roth purchased Filoli.  [Mrs. Roth was Lurline Matson, heir to the Matson Navigation Company which dominated commerce between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii; she was the namesake of the SS LURLINE.]

 

The house is filled with arrangements of flowers grown in the gardens

The Roths introduced maritime and Hawaiian art objects to the house.

When the stove failed during WWII, a stove headed for a Matson ship was installed in the kitchen (right).

The dining room overlooks a terrace into the English Renaissance gardens.

Befitting the Pacific coast, the house has many Asian fine arts, much more so than the Atlantic seaboard.

 

In the painting above, Mrs. Roth is shown in the gardens at Filoli.  To the left is the safe that held the gold from the Bourn's Empire Mine, which the Roth's converted to a wine cellar.

Mrs. Roth bred and raced horses, winning the trophies displayed above.  It is said that when her horse lost a race, she would buy the winner.

A pianist played Cole Porter in the ballroom, gilded by the Bourn's Empire Mine.

 

The Bourns decorated the ballroom with landscape paintings of scenes of the Irish Muckross estate which they had purchased for their daughter and her English husband.

And Bonsai too.

 

 

 

 

A knot garden on the left and an herb garden on the right.

 

The cutting gardens are extensive.

 

The gardens are aligned on a north to south, half mile allee' running from the top of the hill (above); looking down the hill toward the north (below).

   

 

The Garden House overlooks the Sunken Garden.

The Sunken Garden

In the Garden House, we ran into folk from Delaware.