Built: 1915
Built for: William Bowers Bourn II
Architect: Willis Polk
Architectural style: Georgian style
The Bourn Family
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, and his wife, Agnes Moody Bourn. In 1910 they had bought an estate in County Kerry, Ireland, but wanted a country place nearer home. The principal designer, San Francisco architect Willis Polk, used a free Georgian style that incorporated the tiled roofs characteristic of California. 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 between 1917 and 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.
Filoli served as one of the Bourns' residences from 1917 to 1936. 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."
Mr. Bourn's Spring Valley Water Company owned Crystal Springs Reservoir and the surrounding area. Bourn called the Crystal Springs Reservoirs "Spring Valley Lakes" for his company. The original Spring Valley was between Mason and Taylor Streets, and Washington and Broadway Streets in San Francisco, where the water company started. When the company went south for more water, the Spring Valley name was carried south too.
The Roth Family
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.
Current Status
In 1975, Mrs. Roth donated the estate in its entirety to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, with an endowment that helps support annual operating expenses. The estate operates as Filoli Center, a private, non-profit organization with its own Board of Governors, staff and volunteers.
The gardens
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.
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
After it was acquired by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1975, Filoli has been 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.
Ecology and conservation
Laguna Creek, locally known as "Orchard Creek", flows northwest from its origin on the western slope of Edgewood County Park to Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir where its waters eventually join San Mateo Creek, and descend to San Francisco Bay. In November 1769, Laguna Creek was the route of the Portolà expedition as they descended from their discovery of San Francisco Bay on Sweeney Ridge down San Andreas Creek to Laguna Creek and then southeast down the San Francisquito Creek watershed to El Palo Alto. After crossing to the west side of Cañada Road, Laguna Creek is joined on the left (heading downstream) by the South Fork Laguna Creek, then after crossing under the main entrance road to Filoli it is joined by locally named Fault Creek, then Spring Creek (possibly named by Bourn for his Spring Valley Water Company), then on the right by an unnamed creek, then by waters from the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct and Pulgas Water Temple just before entering Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir. Historically, the San Mateo Creek watershed hosted runs of anadromous salmonids, including Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) coming up from the Bay. In 1877, Laguna Grande, a natural lake on Laguna Creek, was dammed with an earthen causeway (now crossed by Highway 92) blocking further salmonid migration up into Laguna Creek and its tributaries on Filoli. Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), the landlocked, adfluvial form of steelhead trout, continue to run up the creeks of Filoli from the reservoir to spawn.
San Mateo County historian Frank Stanger cited sizeable groves of redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) in the Laguna Creek watershed. In the area around Filoli he described two historic lumber mills. The historic "Smith Mill" on Fault Creek was destroyed by fire in 1854. Pinckney's mill in "the largest gulch", which would be Spring Creek, was built in 1855 and later purchased by S. L. Mastic. Although information on these mills is limited, they support the idea that "the area was thoroughly logged". A large redwood tree remains on Laguna Creek just below the lower Filoli parking lot and on the main entrance road.
Film location
Filoli has served as the set for many Hollywood films.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.
Filoli was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production, Guide to Historic Homes of America, 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.
The house also served as the Stanhope residence in the 1997 film George of the Jungle.
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