‘”St. James Park is historically the most important public open space in downtown San Jose,” according to the City’s own design guidelines.’
St James Park in its turn of the century glory, from an early 1900's postcard
More about the buildings surrounding St. James Park
St. James Park and the St. James Square Historic District are ground zero for the Redevelopment Agency’s strategy for re-developing greater downtown San Jose. St. James Park is at the intersection of several discrete RDA initiatives and, characteristically, preserving the historic character of the park and district do not appear to be among the RDA’s priorities.
Located between N. 1st and N. 3rd, St. John and St. James Sts., St. James Square was donated to the City of San Jose by Antonio Maria Pico, per local historian Linda Larson Boston in her pamphlet, Highlights of San Jose, California’s St. James Park and Environs. The square “became a park in 1869, with the addition of cypress, eucalyptus, elm, orange and sycamore trees,” Larson says. Diagonals and peripheral walkways completed the stately design of the Nineteenth Century park.
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‘”St. James Park is historically the most important public open space in downtown San Jose,” according to the City’s own design guidelines.’ |
St James Park in its turn of the century glory, from an early 1900's postcard |
“St. James Park is historically the most important public open space in downtown San Jose,” according to the City of San Jose’s own design guidelines for the park district, enacted in 1989. “St. James Park provides a classic urban space more commonly found in East Coast cities,” says Larson.
St. James Park was the site of a speech by President William McKinley in 1901, four months prior to his assassination in Buffalo, New York. A statute of McKinley was erected in the park the following year. The park was also the site of the1933 lynching of the kidnappers and killers of department store heir Brooke Hart, immortalized in Harry Farrell’s award-winning book, Swift Justice. And in March 1968, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy held a campaign rally in St. James Park, as with McKinley only months prior to being assassinated.
Surrounding St. James Park are several historic buildings. Along First St. are the refurbished Santa Clara County Courthouse, erected in an effort to lure the California capital from Sacramento, and the U.S. Post Office, a two-story Spanish Colonial Revival built as a public works project during the Great Depression. (The Post Office was being constructed at the time of the lynching and some of the construction site materials were used to storm the jail behind the courthouse to extract the Hart kidnappers and haul them to their fate in the park proper.)
Along St. John St., at the corner of N. 2nd St., is the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the oldest church in San Jose, dating to 1863.
1914 Postcard of Trinity Cathedral
On N. Third St. is the First Unitarian Church, designed by local architect George W. Page in a Richardson Romanesque style. “One of a handful of American churches patterned after Unitarian churches of Transylvania, it features a large triple-arched stained glass window on the facade, multiple domes and cupolas, and both round and square towers,” Larson writes. Down the block is the former Scottish Rite Temple, now the Silicon Valley Athletic Club. “Twin sphinxes projecting from the ground floor are the prominent Egyptian features of the three-story structure,” says Larson. “Following the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb . . . Egyptian themes became popular throughout America.”
Along St. James St. is the Sainte Claire Club, San Jose’s oldest men’s club, organized in 1888. Across 2nd St. from the Sainte Claire is the First Church of Christ, Scientist, a 1904 structure built in the shape of a Greek cross. The building has stood vacant for nearly two decades and is at risk of being demolished or moved. Next door is the former Letcher’s Garage, also in danger of demolition.
These eight buildings are Historic District, a locally designated “Contributing Structures” within the St. James Square landmark district also listed on the National Register of Historic Places officially — It is at least for the time being should be designed to — “an Area of Historic Sensitivity” under which “all development enhance the character of the designated resourcedeveloped Design .” As such, in 1989 the City of San Jose Guidelines for the districtinvolved in developing the . PAC*SJ board member Jack Douglas was among the citizenry Guidelines more than a decade ago.
The Guidelines stipulate that Contributing Structures “should be rehabilitated for active use. Retaining only the facades of historic buildings is unacceptable.” The Guidelines further provide that “demolition of a contributing structure should not be considered without (1) detailed plans for the replacement structure and (2) proof that no reasonable use of the existing structure is possible.”
Additionally, the Guidelines provide that newly-constructed buildings which “front the park” must be “one to three stories,” with taller buildings set back from the street around the park. And parking structures “should not have frontage onto St. James Park, nor should they be accessed from the streets edging the park.”
The RDA intends to scrap the Guidelines along with several of the historic buildings around St. James Park because the Guidelines are diametrically opposed to what the RDA now wants. PAC*SJ is informed that RDA has asked the City’s Historic Landmarks Commission to “study” revision of the Guidelines. RDA seeks to demolish or relocate twenty-five percent (2 of 8) Contributing Structures around St. James Park, and to erect high rises destroying the ambience of the remaining historic structures.
St. James Park has its own chapter in the RDA’s San Jose Greater Downtown Strategy for Development (Strategy). The expressly articulated primary strategy is to, “Frame the park on available sites with tall, high-density, mixed income residential development. The tallest buildings should surround the Park and step down as they are developed away from the Park to create a transition to the surrounding lower scaled neighborhoods.” This strategy is, of course, exactly contrary to what the City’s own existing design guidelines stipulate.
How tall is tall? The Strategy states that these new residential structures would be “10 to 15 stories, “but that may be an understatement. RDA director Susan Shick told downtown area residents at a March 24 neighborhood summit sponsored by Councilmember Cindy Chavez that she envisions 16 story-structures abutting the park.
The high-rise housing would be built directly adjacent to St. James Park. RDA’s mixed use project for bringing retail downtown together with additional office and residential space envisions a high-rise residential tower at the southwest corner of 1st and St. John Sts., on the so-called Mitchell Block, kiddy-corner to St. James Park. Ken Himmel, CEO of Palladium Co., the developer hired by RDA to shepherd the mixed use project, told community members at an April 9 public forum that the site is prized for high-rise housing because of the commanding views of the park which its residents’ would have.
The block northeast of the park, at 3rd and St. James Sts., mostly but not entirely vacant, would receive the same treatment. RDA has sent out “requests for qualification” (RFQs) to developers to solicit proposals for high rise housing on the site. At least one single-family, well-maintained Victorian home a half block from the park along St. James St. would be displaced in the bargain. Loraine Wallace, a local attorney who owns the property, is concerned that the RFQ “will impede the ability of property owners . . . to negotiate to perserve historic single family homes.”
The block along St. James St. between 1st and 2nd Sts. is also being eyed by RDA for high rise housing. On March 19, Shick told owners of properties subject to the RFQs that there is “an abundance” of land “on the northside” of the park “ready for development.” By this, Shick means the sites occupied by First Church of Christ, Scientist and Letcher’s Garage. RDA would demolish Letcher’s Garage and either demolish or move the abandoned church. In their stead RDA would erect condos up to 16 stories, far exceeding anything in the surrounding area, and more than 5 times the height limits prescribed in the City’s own design guidelines.
That’s not all. RDA has floated the notion of digging up the park and installing a parking garage under it. This, again, is at odds with the City’s guidelines for the historic district. Even the San Jose Downtown Ass’n (SJDA), which vigorously advocates additional parking downtown, has withheld endorsing the idea, stating in its parking position paper that further study is needed of the proposal to instal a parking garage under St. James Park, as opposed to a garage under Cesar Chavez Park (which SJDA endorses) (Full disclosure: the author is a board member of SJDA as well as PAC*SJ). Sue Cam, past president of the Horace Mann Neighborhood Ass’n, voice of residents in closest proximity to St. James Park, says that “I don’t believe they can put a parking garage under St. James Park without absolutely destroying the park.”
PAC*SJ has identified St. James Park as its number one preservation priority. In late January, PAC*SJ board member Tom Simon met with Shick, the RDA director, and “basically told her that their ideas for high rises” encircling St. James Park “are not acceptable. I told her that we would ‘go to the mat on this issue.’”
According to Simon, Shick “did not see the significance of Letcher’s,” was “unaware of the St. Claire Club” and believed that “the First Church could be incorporated (as a facade) into a new high rise project. She was not concerned about the impact to the district and thought her plan would be something the National Register would think was wonderful,” Simon recalls.
Article from: CONTINUITY, Preservation Action Council of San Jose Newsletter, Spring 2001