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, …
Reading the Inscriptions at Yung See San Fong One of the pleasures of studying a historic house is discovering the small, intentional details that shape the experience of entering it. At Yung See San Fong, that experience includes a pair of vertical Chinese inscriptions placed on bamboo shaped posts beside an opening placed their by …
We are the stewards of a house, and of a statue, that ask hard questions. Yung See San Fong was built by Ruth and Sanborn Young in the Chinese style, and on its grounds stands a Buddha carved by Robert Treat Paine for the Chinese pageants Los Gatos staged from 1919 to 1947. Neither the …
After Establishing His House In Los Gatos, Sanborn felt compelled to run for State Senate Sanborn ran a successful campaign as a Republican, but many things in his campaign were remarkable progressive for his age. Both he and his wife believed strongly in the mind set of independance from government, but considering his campaign was …
On January 12, 1918, the San Jose Mercury Herald devoted a full editorial-page feature to a single house call: “We started, on that Sunday afternoon to call on our first celebrity.” The celebrity was Ruth Comfort Mitchell: the poet, playwright, and short story writer living in her Chinese-styled hillside home above Los Gatos, Yung See …
Read more “How Famous and Impactful Was Ruth Comfort Young?”
At the time color film was reserved for a very small part of the population. This shows the Senator and his wife enjoying the front porch. Note at the end, the kitchen area is shown with the current Skylight. The Skylight was extremely advanced technology at the time. Contemporaries noted Ms. Mitchell’s clothes, jewelry, stationery, …
When Beatrice comes to the property with her crew, you know that she’s the boss. So, why is it called Carlo’s Tree Service? Because her Dad, now retired, started the company 20 years ago. Since he retired, she has been running it solo, with her two crews of tree experts. The Yung See San Fong …