San José City Landmarks

This two-story single-family residence at 1169 Magnolia Avenue is in the Hanchett and Hester Park Conservation Area of San José. Built in 1892 on lots 79 and 80 of what was known as the Schiele Subdivision #2, the house was the home of Julius and Bertha Neifing. Such character-defining features as prominent front gable with bay window, wide front porch with arched frieze and spindled columns and railing, and ornamental “gingerbread” trim and stained-glass windows create a distinctive and unified representation of the Queen Anne style of residential Victorian-era architecture.

The Neifings had arrived in San José in 1884 from their home state of Indiana. Julius Nicholas Neifing (1849-1905), born in Prussia, had come to the US in 1866 at age seventeen. In 1879, he married seventeen-year-old Bertha Frauenknecht (1862-1896), born in Pennsylvania to German parents. Julius Neifing was naturalized in Crown Point, Indiana, in 1880.

–Excerpt from 2021 DPR form, Krista Van Laan, author