Yung See San Fong was completed in 1917 for Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young and Sanborn Young. Our mission for the house is to help people form a living connection with their world of more than 100 years ago.
This is not an argument that the past was simpler, better or free of serious problems. It is an effort to remember individuals who believed that a successful life should reach beyond private achievement.
Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young was a novelist, playwright, poet and public speaker. Her stories repeatedly focused on people who met the world with courage, persistence and a willingness to act. In works such as Jane Journeys On and Of Human Kindness, her characters did not wait passively for life to improve. They worked, endured, adapted and continued forward. Ruth encouraged her readers to embrace the world and its adventures, even when those adventures brought difficulty and uncertainty.
Sanborn Young also built a life extending beyond his personal career. After succeeding in business, he entered public service and represented his community in the California State Senate from 1925 through 1938. His work eventually took him to Geneva as an American delegate addressing international narcotics control. He carried the abilities that had served him in business into public and civic life.
Ruth and Sanborn were not simply occupants of an unusual house. They made Yung See San Fong a place where literature, politics, hospitality and community came together. They used their talents and position to participate in the world around them.
That example is central to what we want the house to represent today.
We are candid that renting Yung See San Fong is a commercial operation. A historic house requires substantial and continuing investment, and rental income helps make its preservation possible. But commercial use is not the complete purpose.
We do not want Yung See San Fong to become merely an artifact viewed from behind a barrier. It was built as a home, and we believe that one of the most meaningful ways to preserve it is for it to remain a living place.
By living in Ruth and Sanborn Young’s special place, today’s residents can experience history as part of ordinary life. They can walk through the rooms the Youngs created, look out on the landscape that surrounded them and consider how people lived, worked and imagined their responsibilities more than a century ago.
A house cannot recreate the past, and its residents should not be expected to imitate the people who once lived there. But a historic place can preserve a question that might otherwise be forgotten.
What does it mean to build a life that matters beyond one’s own career?
For Ruth, part of the answer was creating stories that encouraged people to work, persist and embrace the adventure of life. For Sanborn, it meant carrying private experience into public service. Both tried, in their different ways, to influence the community and people around them.
Our goal is to preserve more than the architecture of Yung See San Fong. We also want to preserve the memory of that larger ambition.
We hope those who live here will see themselves not only as residents, but as temporary participants in a continuing story. If the house encourages them to think about the past, engage more deeply with the present and consider what they might contribute beyond their own success, then Yung See San Fong will continue to serve a purpose worthy of its history.