Glossary

The words you’ll hear around Santana Row — places, history, weather and local ways, explained

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Architecture

Art-glass windows: The pastel, sharply beveled windows of the Winchester house, long called Tiffany but most likely made by John Mallon’s San Francisco firm.
Building 7 (the “wedding cake”): Santana Row’s largest building, a six-acre block of shops over luxury apartments, nicknamed the “wedding cake”; it burned in 2002.
Century 21 dome: The domed movie theater beside the Winchester Mystery House, opened in 1964 as the first Century theater; a San Jose city landmark since 2014.
Doors to nowhere: The house’s doors that open onto thin air and stairs that end at a ceiling, mostly left over from the 1906 earthquake and later remodels.
Greyfield: Planners’ word for an old, obsolete retail site ripe for rebuilding; Town & Country Village is the district’s textbook case.
Seven-story tower: The tower that crowned Llanada Villa before the 1906 earthquake brought it down.
Village within a city: The phrase used for Santana Row from the start: a walkable main street with homes above the shops, inside suburban San Jose.

Events

Cars and Croissants: 100|OCT’s Sunday-morning exotic-car gatherings on Santana Row, held several times a year.
Flashlight tours: Self-guided night walks through the Winchester Mystery House with only a flashlight, held on select nights since the 1980s.
Makers Market street fair: A local artists’ and makers’ street fair on Santana Row, held on second Saturdays and some extra weekends.
San Jose International Short Film Festival: A four-day festival of short films from around the world, held each October at CinéArts on Santana Row.
Santana Row Tree Lighting: The free November evening when Santana Row lights its 40-foot Christmas tree, with music, characters and a confetti snow shower.

History & People

Federal Realty Investment Trust: The real-estate company that developed and owns Santana Row, and is building Santana West across Winchester Boulevard.
Flames diner: A Winchester Boulevard diner beside the domes that began as a Bob’s Big Boy; it closed in 2016.
Frank M. Santana: A member of San Jose’s planning commission in the 1950s, for whom both Santana Row and Frank M. Santana Park are named.
Houdini’s visit: Harry Houdini’s visit to the Winchester house near Halloween 1924, during his campaign against spiritualism.
John and Mayme Brown: The couple who leased Sarah Winchester’s empty house in 1923 and turned it into the Winchester Mystery House attraction.
Llanada Villa: Sarah Winchester’s own name for her San Jose ranch and house, after the Llanada Alavesa in Spain.
Macy’s rooftop carnival: A children’s carnival with seven rides, including a 40-foot Ferris wheel, that ran on the roof of the Valley Fair Macy’s from 1956 to about 1958.
Pizza Time Theatre: The first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, opened by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell at Town and Country Village on May 17, 1977.
Santa Clara–Los Gatos Road: The old country lane that became Winchester Boulevard; Sarah Winchester’s house stood on it.
Santana Row fire: The fire of August 19, 2002 that destroyed Santana Row’s largest building a month before opening; the largest fire in San Jose’s history.
Sarah Winchester: Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester (1839⁠–⁠1922), heiress to part of the Winchester rifle fortune, who built the house on Winchester Boulevard. Family called her Sallie.
Stevens Creek Plaza: The open-air shopping center opened in 1957 on the Santa Clara side, anchored by the Emporium and later I. Magnin; merged into Valley Fair in 1986.
The Hahn Company: The shopping-center developer that bought Valley Fair and Stevens Creek Plaza and joined them into one enclosed mall in 1986.
Town & Country Village: A Spanish-hacienda-style shopping center that opened in 1960 on the corner of Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards, and was razed in the late 1990s for Santana Row.
Valley Fair (1956): The original open-air Valley Fair Shopping Center, a Macy’s with 39 smaller stores, opened on Stevens Creek Boulevard in 1956.
Vincent G. Raney: The architect of the Century dome theaters on Winchester Boulevard, built on his family’s own land.
Winchester Park: The picnic grounds the Browns made of Sarah Winchester’s old gardens in 1923; they closed in the 1960s when the Century theaters were built.

Local Life & Customs

The city line: The San Jose–Santa Clara boundary that runs through Westfield Valley Fair, so the mall answers to two city governments.
The number thirteen: The legend that Sarah Winchester filled her house with thirteens; the features were mostly added after her death.
The séance room (Blue Room): The room long shown as Sarah Winchester’s séance room; records show it was the head gardener’s office.
Urban villages: San Jose’s planning areas for denser, walkable growth; Stevens Creek and Santana Row are two of them.
Winchester Ranch: A senior mobile-home park behind the Century domes, built in 1975 on the Cali family’s old orchard.

Places

CinéArts at Santana Row: The six-screen cinema on Santana Row and home of the San Jose International Short Film Festival.
Frank M. Santana Park: A neighborhood park near Santana Row named for Frank M. Santana, one of three parks Wikipedia lists for the district.
Hotel Valencia: The 215-room hotel at 355 Santana Row, the only hotel on the Row, styled after historic Spain.
Park Valencia: An open space on Santana Row by Hotel Valencia, with a stage used for events such as Farmer Mike’s pumpkin carving.
Santana Heights: The residences at Santana Row; the name of the largest building, Building 7, which burned during construction in 2002.
Santana Row: A 42-acre district of shops, restaurants, homes, offices and a hotel on Stevens Creek Boulevard at Winchester Boulevard, opened in November 2002 on the site of Town & Country Village.
Santana Row Park: The small park in the middle of Santana Row where the tree lighting, Lunar New Year lion dances and makers’ markets take place.
Santana West: Federal Realty’s office campus on the old Century theaters site, at Winchester Boulevard and Olsen Drive, built around the Century 21 dome.
Stevens Creek Boulevard: The main road of West San Jose, running between Santana Row and Westfield Valley Fair.
West San Jose: The western region of San Jose, bordering Santa Clara, Cupertino, Saratoga and Campbell; home of the Winchester Mystery House, Santana Row and Valley Fair.
Westfield Valley Fair: The enclosed mall across Stevens Creek Boulevard from Santana Row, grown from the 1956 Valley Fair and the 1957 Stevens Creek Plaza; the largest mall in Northern California by area.
Winchester (neighborhood): The West San Jose neighborhood that holds Santana Row, named after Sarah Winchester.
Winchester Boulevard: The north-south road past the Winchester Mystery House and Santana Row, named after Sarah Winchester; once the Santa Clara–Los Gatos Road.
Winchester Mystery House: Sarah Winchester’s rambling Victorian mansion at 525 South Winchester Boulevard, open for tours since 1923; California Historical Landmark No. 868.

Shopping & Dining

Dining Terrace: Valley Fair’s second-level food court, added in a 2001 expansion and remodeled in 2013 with local concepts alongside national chains.
Luxury Collection: The lower-level wing of Valley Fair, by Nordstrom, reworked in 2013 for luxury fashion houses.