Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Before Valerie Hopkins and husband John bought their home at 136 Tait Ave., it was a boarding house, duplex and triplex before coming full circle to be a single-family residence again.

Historic homes open for tour

By Shari Kaplan

The Los Gatos Museum Association holds its annual fall fundraiser, the Historic Homes Tour, two months early this year--ahead of the mercurial November weather that rained on but did not discourage tour participants in the recent past.

The rest of the tour is the same: Five authentically restored local homes, most more than 100 years old, will be open to the public for LGMA docent-led tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sept. 27 and 28.

Four of the five homes are within walking distance of each other in the Almond Grove district. The remaining home is located in the nearby Glen Ridge district.

The Wright House, at 30 Tait Ave., is a one-story Folk Victorian with detailing in the Queen Anne tradition. The house was built in 1893 by William and Gertie Wright. Roger Cummings and Jennifer Scott, current owners of the yellow-and-white house, are in the process of decorating and restoring it with furnishings and stylistic details that reflect the Victorian period.

Down the street at 128 Tait Ave. is the Louisa Pearce house, a cottage built in the early 1890s with Queen Anne features including a front gable over a bay window, a gable-on-hip roof and distinctive fretwork on the front porch's half-façade. The tall redwood tree is significantly older than the house it towers over.

William and Louisa Pearce, who ran a grocery store on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, were the original owners; they also owned two homes on the next block of Tait. Current owners John and Lavon Peck have extended the rear of the house and are decorating it with a Victorian flair.

Once known as Mrs. Templeton's boarding house, the colorful two-story at 136 Tait Ave. has mainly Italianate features, such as a pyramid-hipped roof with shallow slopes, overhanging eaves and the now-remodeled narrow, tall second-story windows.

Later owners made significant changes. Harvey and Anna Belknap had it converted first into a duplex and then a triplex; the Geissman family reduced it to a duplex; and a builder reconverted it into the single-family dwelling that is now home to John and Valerie Hopkins.

The blue-and-white Thomas Ham house, located at 107 Wilder Ave., possesses transitional architecture: a Dutch Colonial gambrel roof, Victorian decorations and a Craftsman-style porch.

Currently owned by Steven and Victoria Kellogg, the house was built by Hiram and Cordelia Dickinson in 1910 and has a twin at 113 Wilder Ave. Several Dickinson relatives owned the houses over the decades, although most did not live there.

The expansive two-story Tudor-style home at 60 Ellenwood Ave., known as the Bogart house, is also called "The Gables" because of those structures' prominence in the front.

Jemima Templeman Bogart and husband Arthur W. Bogart--she of Massachusetts and he of Nova Scotia--built the stately home around 1918. Arthur ran a hardware store on N. Santa Cruz Avenue around the turn of the century. Current owners are Mark and Barbara Beck.

The Historic Homes Tour takes place Sept. 27-28. Tickets, which may be purchased at the Forbes Mill Museum on Church Street or the Los Gatos Museum of Art and Natural History on Tait Avenue, are $12 in advance or $15 on the tour day. Special rates are available for LGMA members. Tour participants can stop by the Tait museum any time during the tour for free refreshments. For more information, call 354-2646 or 395-7375.

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