Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Lyndon cupola finally finds home in Oak Meadow Park

Historic structure once topped Lyndon carriage house

By Jeff Kearns

After a long restoration process--and adding a semi-obscure architectural term to the town's lexicon (it's KYOO-puh-luh)--the Lyndon Carriage House cupola now has a new home in Oak Meadow Park, where it will be unveiled at a ceremony on May 30. The event will also dedicate the newly renovated playground at the park.

At their Feb. 25 meeting, planning commissioners asked Sue Farwell to omit the 18-foot-high element from the building she wants to construct downtown. Shortly thereafter, the town took the cupola out of storage and moved it to the concrete band shell in the park's southwest corner. The cupola may later be placed on top of a gazebo in the park.

But even with its bright new paint job peeking out from underneath a blue tarp, the redwood cupola's $50,000 refurbishing job isn't quite complete--the tin for the roof hasn't arrived yet. A wrought-iron fence surrounds the cupola, and the rear wall of the band shell will be painted to cover up the graffiti that has accumulated there.

Restoration costs were covered by a grant from the county Historical Heritage Committee that was approved by the county Board of Supervisors.

The town funded the playground renovation, which is part of a series of upgrades and improvements planned for town playgrounds, including the Hows play lot on Union Avenue, which is currently under way, and the Oak Hill lot on Garden Lane, where work is scheduled to begin sometime in the next couple of weeks. La Rinconada Park, a 14-acre area on Granada Way, is scheduled for an update sometime this summer.

Parks Commissioner Norbert Witt said he's happy to see some closure in the saga of the cupola; the Town Council originally approved relocating the cupola in the park in August 1994.

Farwell's proposal to incorporate the cupola on top of her building wasn't very popular with the commission, he said. "We were all dead set against that. It doesn't belong there. It's part of the town's heritage."

The Los Gatos Community Foundation is currently trying to raise $50,000 to build the gazebo, which would be crowned by the cupola. Almost half that amount has been pledged so far.

The cupola originally topped John W. Lyndon's carriage house, which was built on the hill above Broadway Avenue in 1888. It was part of Lyndon's estate, along with a 10,000-square-foot mansion overlooking the valley. Los Gatos Meadows, a life-care community, now sits on the property.

Lyndon started out as a businessman at a general store in the town of Lexington, which was located at the bottom of its eponymous reservoir, and sold his interest in 1868. He used the money to buy property in San Jose, Los Gatos and Sonoma. Lyndon owned much of what became downtown Los Gatos in 1877, when the Southern Pacific line came through town, bringing growth to the area.

When Los Gatos was incorporated in 1887, Lyndon sat on the first board of trustees. In 1901 he built the Hotel Lyndon, which was razed in 1963. Tenants of Lyndon Plaza, which now occupies the site, were the most outspoken critics of Sue Farwell's plans to build a mixed-use building behind the plaza, on what's now a parking lot.

Sue Farwell's late husband, James Farwell, who was Lyndon's great-grandson, originally saved the cupola when the estate was demolished in 1968 and stored it in the parking lot behind Lyndon Plaza. James Farwell had planned to rebuild the carriage house, but he never got around to the project.

[ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ]