Filoli is a country house set in 16 acres (6.5 ha) of formal gardens surrounded by 654 acres (265 ha) estate, located in Woodside, California, about 25 miles (40 km) south of San Francisco, at the southern end of Crystal Springs Lake, on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Contents |
Filoli was built between 1915 and 1917 for William Bowers Bourn II, owner of one of California's richest gold mines and president of Spring Valley Water Company, supplying San Francisco's water,[1] and his wife, Agnes Moody Bourn. In 1910 they had bought an estate in County Kerry, Ireland, but wanted a country place nearer home.[2] The principal designer, San Francisco architect Willis Polk, used a free Georgian style that incorporated the tiled roofs characteristic of California.[3] Polk had previously designed Bourn's houses in Grass Valley and on Webster Street in San Francisco. Polk's friend Bruce Porter was commissioned to collaborate with the Bourns in planning the gardens, which were laid out 1917-1922. The horticulturist who designed the plantings and fixed the original color schemes was Isabella Worn; she supervised the garden's maintenance for 35 years.[4]
Filoli served as one of the Bourns' residences from 1917 to 1936. Mr. Bourn's Spring Valley Water Company owned Crystal Springs Lake and the surrounding area. The name of the estate is an acronym formed by combining the first two letters from the key words of William Bourn's credo: "Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life."
Following the deaths of William and Agnes Bourn in 1936, the estate was sold the following year to Mr. and Mrs. William P. Roth, Mrs. Roth was Lurline Matson, heir of the Matson Navigation Company. The Roth family built Filoli's botanic collections of camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas notably in the woodland garden, and added the serene swimming pool and the screened-in teahouse.[5] In 1975, Mrs. Roth donated the estate in its entirety to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, with an endowment that meets a third of the operating expenses.[6]
The 16 acres (6.5 ha) of gardens are structured as a series of formally enclosed spaces framed within brick walls and clipped hedges, which open one from another, providing long axial views, in which profuse naturalized plantings of hardy and annual plants contrast with lawns, brick and gravel paths, formal reflecting pools, framed in walls and clipped hedging in box, holly, laurel and yew (illustration, right) and punctuated by massive terracotta pots and many narrowly columnar Irish yews, originally grown on the estate from cuttings. Filoli is an outstanding example of the Anglo-American gardening style reintroducing Italian formality, that was pioneered at the end of the nineteenth century by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll in British gardens and exemplified in the U.S. by designs of Charles A. Platt and Beatrix Farrand.[7]
The gardens extend southeast of the house running up an easy slope. The sunken garden is the first of four main rooms; the rectangular pool at its center that houses hardy and tropical water lilies is flanked by twin panels of lawn and two two olive trees, within the hedge of clipped Japanese yew. The walled garden consists of a series of enclosures, including the rose window design outlined in clipped box
Today, Filoli is open for public tours. Attractions include self-guided tours, guided tours, and nature hikes. The formal gardens include several areas, including the Wedding Place, especially designed for Berenice Roth's wedding. Lurline and Berenice both had their wedding receptions at Filoli, but Berenice's wedding is the only one that has ever taken place at Filoli. The largest gardens are working gardens for the production of cut flowers for the mansion and for the growing of some vegetables. The gardens are largely maintained by local volunteers, one of whom may be seen in the image above carefully trimming the boundary hedge.
Filoli has served as the set for many Hollywood movies.[8] Most famously, it is the mansion seen from the air in the opening credits of the television series Dynasty. The mansion's plush interiors were also featured in the first episodes of the series but were subsequently replicated on sound stages at the Fox Studios, Century City. However the entire mansion served as the setting for the 2006 CBS Television special Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar in which cast members reunited to discuss their memories of the series. It was the first time many of the cast members had been to the actual estate.
Among the many striking mature trees on the grounds are a row of immense Italian Stone Pines and scattered specimen native Coast Live Oaks over 250 years in age, the latter of which are the backdrop for Warren Beatty's outdoor scenes in Heaven Can Wait.
The Filoli estate recently went through extensive rehabilitation and a new visitor center and café were built. San Francisco architecture firm, Architectural Resources Group, designed the new visitor and education center as well as oversaw seismic strengthening of the historic main house. The new facility includes a 255 seat assembly room, main lobby orientation room, a café, offices and a catering kitchen.
Filoli was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production, Guide to Historic Homes of America,[9] as well as in a November 1996 segment of A&E's America's Castles: Garden Estates, the latter being shown continuously at the visitor center.[10]