It's a neighborhood filled with young families moving in and remodeling homes that were built in the early 20th century.

When Stella Beers and her late husband moved into their home on Settle Avenue in 1944 no one put out the welcome mat. The couple's three daughters were the only children on the block.

"The neighbors weren't happy about it. They said it was a quiet neighborhood before we came here."

Her neighbor of 23 years, Nancy Garrison, who has been Beers' friends for years, was unaware of the neighborhood's general attitude toward the Beerses' children when they first moved in.

"Oh my gosh! How could they have said that!" Garrison says, shocked.

Beers remembers a neighborhood that was forgotten when Willow Glen was annexed by the city of San Jose in 1936.

Most of the houses were already built in the neighborhood when Beers arrived, and many were dilapidated or in need of refurbishing, or even beyond rescuing. Some were subsequently demolished and rebuilt.

She's outlived many of her neighbors. In fact, she's very candid about pointing out various houses whose residents she's outlived. "One died there; a couple died over there. They were old people," says Beers, 93.

Today, however, there are more children on Settle than the residents here can remember in a long time, and Beers feels they make a pleasant addition to life on the street, as does Garrison, who has lived here since 1980.

Garrison moved to San Jose from Hawaii in 1956, when her father came to California to work at the Del Monte food processing plant. But she's a farmer by upbringing and when she was looking for a house, she wanted to make sure it had deep lots for her spacious garden. Since most of the land in the area consisted of orchards, the ground behind her home was perfect for her plants and fruit trees and the redwood tree that she planted when she moved here. There are other redwood trees in the neighborhood that are decades old, "but it's catching up," she says. Her tree is about half as high as the others.


History behind the names

Settle Avenue is named after Campbell T. Settle, who lived at the southwest corner of Willow and Lincoln avenues, according to The Willow Glen Neighborhood: Then and Now, by April Hope Halberstadt. Settle helped create the Farmer's Union in 1874 and later became its president. The Republican was also elected mayor of San Jose in 1884. He operated the county's largest prune dehydrator, processing up to two tons of prunes a day for the Alden Fruit and Vegetable Company.

The street resembles Curtiss Avenue, which runs parallel to Settle Avenue two blocks away. These streets are some of the most narrow in the area, the result of subdividing orchard lots before the advent of cars, when horse and carriage were still the primary mode of transportation. Parking is allowed on only one side of the street.

"It's a nice little country lane," Garrison says.

Narrow streets are one of the main reasons that Tom Liggett moved to his Curtiss Avenue home a little more than 20 years ago. His house is where the Willow Glen Horse Yard was located up until around the 1960s.

The woman he bought the home from said Willow Glen didn't own much property in the 1930s, and the city needed someplace to keep the horses that helped workers maintain the dirt streets. Through most of San Jose, dirt roads were easier on hoofs but sidewalks needed to be washed occasionally, and horses would pull the water wagons.

The deep lots for most of the homes along Curtiss Avenue were designed to accommodate horses, because no one wanted the odor of smelly horses and their droppings wafting too close to the homes, Liggett says.

In working his backyard, he would occasionally discover stirrups or harnesses. He says he could have gotten a house on Cherry Avenue for a less expensive price but he wanted to live "in a quieter area."

"Essentially, I didn't want to live someplace that was too similar to Los Gatos," Liggett says. "And Willow Glen had everything I needed."

He doesn't plan to leave anytime soon.

"You come to Curtiss Avenue and you're a lifer," he says. "Nobody wants to leave. I'm stuck here the rest of my life, but it's a nice stuck."

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer A Rosy Life: Tom Liggett, who has lived on Curtiss Avenue for two decades, has developed a rose garden on his large plot. He is a farmer and clinical chemist by trade. His land was once home to the Willow Glen Horse Yard.

When their daughter, Dylan, was born four years ago, Desirree Madison-Biggs and her husband, David, could have moved elsewhere, but they preferred to remain, enjoying the closeness and seclusion of the street.

"Curtiss Avenue is the street that Willow Glen forgot," Madison-Biggs says.

That kind of seclusion makes for a quiet street, even on traditionally noisy holidays like Halloween or the Fourth of July, the residents say. But it's a different story over on Blewett Avenue.


Turning on Blewett Avenue

Blewett Avenue was filled with children in the early 1970s, 30-year Blewett Avenue resident Belinda Weber recalls. There were at least 50 children who played in the streets.

However, there aren't as many children today.

"You don't see many children playing in the street. Parents want children closer to home. Due to changes in more people working, kids are not as noticeable."

Blewett Avenue was named after a family that actually lived on Settle but owned an orchard behind their house. The street was named after the family when the orchard was subdivided.

Weber says that during the past few years many old homes have been demolished or remodeled.

"It's getting to the point that the oldest houses are going away," Weber says. "It's sort of a loss, but it's progress."

And she is part of that change, remodeling her home like the new families moving in.

"My house was more than 100 years old. It was a disaster when I moved in," Weber says. "We called it the haunted house."

George Garabino lived on Blewett for 15 years before moving to Willow Street, and then ailing health and old age caused him to move into the Skyline Healthcare Center in San Jose's Rose Garden area.

"Life was simple and very nice," says the 91-year old wistfully.

During warm weather months he'd invite friends and neighbors over to his home for a barbecue. Years ago, he allowed neighborhood children to use his backyard pool for swimming lessons. The pool eventually became a rose bed.

"I planted rose trees, and they got to be 8 feet high. They were beautiful trees, and when they'd bloom in the morning and the wind would blow into the house, it was like spraying perfume. And they were in bloom practically all year."

Near the end of his time on the street, neighbors began remodeling their century-old homes, and he did, too.

"I changed the kitchen. I changed the bathroom. I built a barbecue room outside. I did a lot of remodeling."


Neighbors get involved

Kotenberg Avenue resident Lou Prsha also remodeled her home, which was built in the 1930s, but she has retained the original look in the front. When she and her family moved here in 1987, the house was small but in good condition. Eventually she remodeled the house from the back to maintain the house's vintage appearance in front.

Prsha has been around just 16 years, but it's long enough for her to have become a neighborhood leader. She is the block captain for her street, as well as for Blewett, Settle and Curtiss avenues, and coordinates the neighborhood's annual front yard Christmas tree event. This role has allowed her to get to know nearly everyone in the neighborhood. And she, too, has noticed that there are more children again and fewer seniors.

"There are very few elderly here on Kotenberg," she says. "Most residents here are between their 30s and 50s."

Despite the street's mostly professional residents, Halloween has been slow the last couple of years, she says. Yet over on Settle Avenue, Garrison says parents from other streets bring their trick-or-treaters to knock on the doors.

What Prsha has also noticed is the way neighbors seem to support each other, especially in trying times.

"This street really comes together in times of need," she says. For example, a couple next door just had twins, and the neighbors offered support such as babysitting duties. Also, as some of the older neighbors pass away, other neighbors offer emotional support to loved ones left behind.

The avenue is named after Ella Kotenberg, who also owned some orchards on Settle Avenue.


Still short and sweet

The dividing and subdividing of parcels, lots and orchards created one very short, inconspicuous street—Longley Avenue—connecting Settle and Kotenberg avenues. To drive by, it could be mistaken for an inlet to a cul-de-sac. To walk it from one end to another takes less than a minute.

Kaye Swayze, 63, inherited her home on this small street from her parents.

"I grew up thinking the street's name was a joke because it's the shortest street around here," laughs Swayze, whose street has hardly changed since her childhood. Even some of the original homeowners remain.

"It's pretty much the same people who stay here, too," Swayze says. "They didn't move around much. Even I didn't move too far away before moving back here."

Unlike its surrounding streets, which are undergoing a veritable architectural renaissance, Longley Avenue houses pretty much remain the same.

"If there's any remodeling done on Longley," Swayze says, "it's mostly internal." Many of the neighbors at one point or another have redecorated living rooms or refurbished bathrooms.

As a cut-through street that is far from Willow Street and Minnesota Avenue, Longley provides a safe passage, as well as additional trick-or-treating opportunities, for children. But most of the year children are scarce.

"We get lots of kids on Halloween," Swayze says, "and we even get parents who bring their kids from other neighborhoods."

Another longtime Longley Avenue resident is 84-year-old Richard Neville. He and his wife, Carol, moved to his childhood home in 1973. His parents built the house in 1925, when he was 5 years old.

"It was one of the first houses built on Longley," he says. "I even remember when Longley wasn't even a street; it was in the dreaming stage. When we moved here our only neighbor was a man with a hay field and a couple of horses."

Photograph courtesy of the Neville family Quaint Times: The Richard Neville family home is shown here as it appeared in 1930 on Longley Avenue. The house has been remodeled since those days.

"Those were the original streets of Willow Glen," he says. "They didn't need wide streets then because all you needed to get around was a horse and carriage. I miss the orchards, but that doesn't mean stopping progress."

Even the younger Neville built some homes. He built one on Lincoln Avenue and later one in Los Gatos. He, Carol and their two daughters lived in them before selling them to help pay for their daughters' college tuition. When Neville's mother passed away in the early 1970s, they moved into his childhood home.

He not only came home to an unchanged house but an almost unchanged neighborhood.

"Outside of people dying of old age around here," he says, "not many people on Longley would say anything has changed much."

But there is one change he's noticed on the adjacent streets: younger couples moving in ready to start their own families.

"We're getting a kind of mix of people here," he says. "We're getting the young people back in here."

Today he enjoys a neighborhood similar to his youth and wishes the same for these new families.

"I've been here a long time and I don't know everyone in the neighborhood, but most of the people here are friendly," he says. "They're willing to stop and talk with you when they walk down the street."