Greater Gardner historic homes another step closer to preservation
With 965 houses that represent more than a century of architectural styles, the Greater Gardner neighborhood of San Jose is flirting with historical status.
After determining that its array of homes are worth saving, the San Jose Historic Landmarks Commission agreed last month to consider nominating the neighborhood for designation as a conservation area.
Community members have tried for about 15 years to tag the neighborhood — which includes North Willow Glen, Gardner and Gregory Plaza — with a historic label. The area is bounded by Interstate 280, Highway 87, Willow Street and Bird Avenue.
Some of the area’s homes date back to the 1880s, when the Bird and Coe families — Willow Glen’s two largest property owners at the time — started subdividing their land.
Harvey Darnell, a former Strong Neighborhoods Initiative chairman, and other Greater Gardner residents have pressed the battle, with the outcome hinging in part on a historic survey.
The city hired a consultant to conduct a historic survey of the neighborhood in 2010. Although the survey was finished a year later, Darnell said city budget cuts during the recession meant “there was nobody there to process the report, and it just sat there forever until less than a year ago.
The neighborhood could be a historical goldmine, the report suggests. It notes that “little identification of historic resources through survey efforts has occurred to date, and consequently the quantity and significance of historic properties in this large inner-city neighborhood has remained unknown.”
District 6 Councilwoman Dev Davis, who lives in North Willow Glen, said a conservation designation would be “insurance for our neighborhood character.”
“We would be one of the first neighborhoods in San Jose with that designation,” Davis said. “Our neighborhood shows the history of San Jose in architecture over time.”
That history includes farmhouses more than a century old, she said, plus “Queen Annes, Craftsmans and everything in between, and then it goes into the modern home.”
“I don’t live in one of the cool houses,” Davis jokingly acknowledged, referring to her home as “a non-contributing structure.”
City historic preservation officer Susan Walsh said in an interview that homes with recognized historic characteristics “would need to comply with our single-family historic guidelines” during any remodeling. But since there have been “quite a few people speaking in favor of it,” Walsh said the additional restrictions are welcome.
“Most people who are going to have their house in that conservation area have been wanting that for a long time,” Walsh said. “The properties in the area will be preserved rather than altered in ways that are not constant with the character of the neighborhood.”
Declaring the Greater Gardner area historic could possibly protect residents’ homes from being torn down if the planned high-speed rail project cuts through the community at grade level, although it’s uncertain how strong those legal protections would be.
“It’s not clear what impact that would have on high-speed rail,” Davis said. “It certainly makes an argument. I don’t know that it would tie (the state’s) hands.”
A date hasn’t yet been scheduled for the historic landmarks commission’s vote on whether to nominate the Greater Gardner neighborhood as a conservation area. Hearings before the landmarks and planning commissions would take place before any proposal goes to the city council for a final vote.