History

The district at Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards is young. A century ago it was orchard country on the western edge of San Jose, with one very unusual house.

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The south end of the Winchester house's east front in a black-and-white survey photograph

A short history of Santana Row

The district at Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards is young. A century ago it was orchard country on the western edge of San Jose, with one very unusual house. The shopping centers came in the 1950s, the dome theaters in the 1960s, and Santana Row in 2002. This page tells that story in short, with a link to the source for every claim. It covers only the district: Santana Row, Westfield Valley Fair, the blocks between them and the Winchester Mystery House across Winchester Boulevard.

A ranch on the Santa Clara–Los Gatos Road, 1886

In 1886 Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Wirt Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, bought an eight-room farmhouse on a 45-acre ranch in the Santa Clara Valley from John Hamm, for $12,570 [4]. She named it Llanada Villa, because the land reminded her of the Llanada Alavesa in Spain [4]. The house stood on a country lane called the Santa Clara–Los Gatos Road, and she was among the first to grow fruit in the area [4]. Over time she enlarged the property to about 160 acres [4].

She was her own architect. She designed rooms one by one, without an overall plan, and tore down or abandoned work she did not like [3] [4]. One of the carpenters, James Elwin Perkins, arrived in San Jose in 1888 and worked ten years for “Mrs. Winchester” before becoming a contractor [22]. Her niece Daisy Merriman lived with her until 1903 [5].

The 1906 earthquake brought down the house’s seven-story tower, most of its chimneys and its upper additions; afterward she cleared the rubble but built little more there, and spent most of her time at her home in Atherton [3]. She died at Llanada Villa on September 5, 1922 [4] [5]. By then the house had 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways and 47 fireplaces [3].

How a legend grew

Newspapers began to speculate about the house in her lifetime. A San Francisco Chronicle article of February 24, 1895 suggested she was building so that she would not die, and a 1909 Chronicle piece described workmen who built one month what they tore down the next [5] [19]. Her staff, her lawyer and her companion later said she was clear-headed and not superstitious [3] [19]. Historians have found no evidence for the séances, and the room called the séance room was the head gardener’s office [3] [23]. Tales of the number thirteen first appeared in print in 1929, after her death [3].

The Mystery House, 1923

After her death the estate was auctioned and divided [5]. In April 1923 John and Mayme Brown leased the house and what was left of its grounds, hoping at first to build a family amusement park; instead they opened the house itself [5]. Tours began on June 30, 1923, with Mayme Brown as the first guide, and about 10,000 people came on opening day [5]. Harry Houdini visited near Halloween in 1924 [5] [24]. The house became a California Historical Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 [5] [20].

Valley Fair and the shopping centers, 1956⁠–⁠1960

After the Second World War the orchards around the house began to give way. In 1956 Valley Fair opened on Stevens Creek Boulevard: a Macy’s with 39 smaller stores around it, and for its first couple of years a children’s carnival with a 40-foot Ferris wheel on the Macy’s roof [6] [7]. Heather David of the Sourisseau Academy calls it the South Bay’s first modern suburban shopping mall [7]. In 1957 Stevens Creek Plaza opened across the street, anchored by an Emporium; I. Magnin joined it in 1964 [7]. A former San Jose mayor, Tom McEnery, later wrote that Valley Fair set off the long draining of shoppers from downtown San Jose [21].

In 1960 a third center, Town & Country Village, opened across Stevens Creek Boulevard, built in the style of a Spanish hacienda with red roofs, specialty stores and covered walkways [7] [8]. It sat on a 33-acre site less than four miles from downtown [9].

Unknown author · Public domain

BWChicago · CC BY 2.0

Cristiano Tomás · CC BY-SA 4.0

Domes on Winchester Boulevard, 1960s

In the 1960s the old road past the house was renamed Winchester Boulevard, and the Browns’ “Winchester Park” picnic grounds closed to make way for Century Theatres [5] [4]. The Century 21 opened beside the Mystery House on November 24, 1964: the first theater of the Century chain, a domed building designed by Vincent G. Raney for wide-screen films, which opened with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 70mm [13] [14]. The Century 22 and 23 followed, and the Century 22 was one of the first theaters to show Star Wars in 1977 [14].

Pizza Time, 1977

On May 17, 1977, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell opened the first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre in San Jose [15]. It was in Town and Country Village, and it stayed there until February 1985 [1].

One mall, two cities, 1986⁠–⁠2022

In 1986 The Hahn Company bought Valley Fair and Stevens Creek Plaza and joined them into one two-level enclosed mall [2] [7]. Nordstrom arrived in 1987, the old Emporium became a second Macy’s in 1996, and Westfield bought the mall in 1998 [2]. Because the San Jose–Santa Clara city line runs through it, the mall pays sales tax to both cities; when San Jose raised its minimum wage in 2012 and Santa Clara did not, workers on the two sides were paid differently [2] [16]. A $1.1 billion expansion opened with Bloomingdale’s on March 5, 2020, and Eataly followed on June 16, 2022 [2] [17].

Santana Row and the fire, 1997⁠–⁠2002

By 1997, when its land came up for sale, Town & Country Village had been out of date for two decades [9]. Federal Realty Investment Trust replaced it with Santana Row, a 42-acre “village within a city” of shops, restaurants, homes and a hotel, named after Frank M. Santana, a San Jose planning commissioner of the 1950s [1] [12]. Critics, among them former mayor McEnery, argued that it would hurt downtown [10] [11].

On August 19, 2002, about a month before the planned opening, the project’s largest building, Building 7, caught fire while workers were on its roof [10]. It was the largest fire in San Jose’s history [10]. The six-acre building, nicknamed the “wedding cake”, was destroyed with 36 shops and 242 apartments and townhouses; embers set at least 15 smaller fires, destroying 39 units of a nearby apartment complex and leaving 132 people homeless [1] [10]. Damage was estimated at $129 million [1]. The Winchester Mystery House was not damaged [10]. Federal Realty rebuilt, and Santana Row opened in November 2002 [9] [11].

The district today

The Century domes closed in 2014 when their 50-year lease ended, and the Century 21 was made a San Jose city landmark [13]. The Century 22 and 23 have since been torn down for Federal Realty’s Santana West offices, which keep the Century 21 dome [18]. In 2023 the Winchester Mystery House marked 100 years of tours [5]. Santana Row now counts more than 8.5 million visits a year [25], and Valley Fair, after its expansion, posted record sales in 2022 [17].