The Woman Under the Oaks: Mrs. Lasley Photographs Yung See San Fong Sometime in the early 1930s, a Los Gatos woman named Evelyn Lasley stopped her car near the foot of Cypress Way, walked a little way up the driveway, and set up a camera under the big coast live oaks. The picture she made …
Somewhere between a Los Gatos estate sale and the present day, an entire artistic life disappeared. As the owner of the Yung See San Fong house, I’ve done some research on the Youngs, and the saddest thing for me is losing a bit of the Senator’s artistic side. When the Historic American Buildings Survey documented …
Read more “The Vanished Lens: The Lost Photographs of Sanborn Young”
Ruth at the Shrine: The Night Her Words Filled a Cast of 400 Of all the stages Ruth Comfort Mitchell wrote for in her long career, none was bigger than the one she commanded on the night of Wednesday, January 15, 1930. That evening the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles presented “Hear, O Israel,” a …
“But isn’t it nice I don’t have to prove it for a long time to come!” The grandfather’s clock which had belonged to a Bob Lee Tenafee three generations earlier struck seven and she came swiftly to her point. “You know, Cousin ‘Gene, I’ve been thinking a lot about Nancy, lately.” Ruth Comfort Mitchell, The …
The Symbols Surrounding the House Name In the first part of this story, we looked at the four Chinese characters placed above the fireplace: 楊氏山房 They identify the house as the Young family’s mountain retreat. The larger view of the fireplace reveals that the inscription was never intended to stand alone. It sits at the …
Central Carving The most important inscription at Yung See San Fong may be the one placed directly above the living room fireplace. Set within an elaborate carved screen of clouds, branches, flowers, birds and geometric ornament are four Chinese characters: 楊氏山房 The characters are read from right to left. In modern Mandarin they are pronounced …
Two carved Chinese characters appear between the three tall windows on the exterior of Yung See San Fong. They are simple, direct and especially appropriate for a house that once received writers, politicians, actors and other visitors. Together, the characters say: 歡迎 Huān yíng Welcome The character on the viewer’s right is 歡, pronounced huān. …
A New Chapter for Yung See San Fong When I first became the owner of Yung See San Fong, I understood that I wasn’t really buying a property. I was accepting a responsibility. The name translates to Young’s Home in the Heart of the Hills, and the house has always been more than walls and …
The Thousand-Gallon Tenant in My Basement Every old house keeps something from a previous owner. Ours keeps a thousand gallons of the early twentieth century. It sits in the basement, fourteen feet long and three and a half feet across, a riveted steel cylinder with the heft of cast iron and the patience of a …
The Carved Door Couplet Whatever success we wear, we earned by walking the path our ancestors cleared.Whatever position we hold, we use to build good fortune for the generations to come. These carved panels stand on the staircase leading up to the bedrooms of Yung See San Fong. Every night for more than a century, …