Agda Pkt 2025.12.08 Joint SA PFA

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Kostura, Mills Act nomination for 731 Edgewood Road, Redwood City Robert W. Gunn, real estate agent at 410 Montgomery Street George T. Knox, notary public and commissioner of deeds, 444 California Street. Most of the above were also shareholders. Other shareholders included some well-known San Franciscans: Percy Beamish, one of the city’s most fashionable purveyors of men’s clothing and furnishing goods; George C. Shreve, the jeweler; George W. Percy, the architect; D. A. Macdonald, president of the Enterprise Mill and Building Company; Maurice Dore, real estate agent and auctioneer; Robert H. Pease, Jr., the San Francisco agent for Goodyear Rubber Company; Hubert Vischer, a civil engineer; and W. D. Sanborn, a railroad agent. The real estate agents and auctioneers Bovee, Toy, and Company handled the details in creating Wellesley Park and probably invested in the tract as well. They were a long-established and prominent firm. Their cashier was an officer of the subdivision, one of their proprietors was a director, and their office doubled as the address for the Wellesley Land and Improvement Co. The subdivision comprised 163 acres and stretched from today’s El Camino Real to Alameda de las Pulgas. Regarding its layout, it was ahead of its time. Instead of a rectangular grid of streets and blocks, as was typical of tracts in the 19th century, the streets were curved and none of the blocks was rectangular. Amenities were created at the start. One was a stone entrance wall and gate near El Camino Real, designed by San Francisco architect John Gash, and topped by a statue of a stag (modeled on Sir Edwin Landseer’s painting The Monarch of the Glen, in Westminster Palace, London). The other was a circular park called Wellesley Crescent. The latter of these is still in place, with numerous trees, lawns, and rustic paths. Such features were meant to attract buyers, but did not become common in California subdivisions until the 1910s, as a response to the City Beautiful Movement. Thus, Wellesley Park prefigured several early 20th century subdivisions such as Sea Cliff, St. Francis Wood, and Forest Hill in San Francisco. In one way the subdivision was typical for the 19th century: it was optimistic; that is, it was created before a substantial demand for suburban residences had arrived in Redwood City. When sales did not prove brisk, three hundred of the lots were offered at auction at the end of May 1890, and 120 of them sold for prices of from $150 to $1,050 each, for a total income of $28,450 (an average of $237 per lot). These prices were very low even for 1890. Most of these lots probably sold to patient speculators rather than to people who would build homes. Today at least six fine houses in the tract area can be found that were built during the years 1909-1915. In 1925 much of the tract remained undeveloped, and the the southwestern third of it, about 58 acres, was sold to new proprietors. This was the area bounded by Whipple Avenue, Edgewood Road, Melrose Place, and Alameda de las Pulgas. They incorporated their new property as the Edgewood Park Company and hired civil engineer C. L. Dimmitt to resurvey the tract, cutting new streets through and realigning others. 6 9.A. - Page 75 of 247 333