Hillsborough -- 100 years of gracious living

The mid-Peninsula rancho wasn’t the couple’s only property. Howard had been buying property on the continent’s West Coast for years. Thus, in the summer of 1849 W.D.M. was already well-to-do when 16-year-old Agnes stepped off her ship onto a San Francisco pier. Howard liked to meet the ships at the pier, ever alert for new business opportunities. When he first saw Agnes, however, he saw opportunity of another sort. Within one month, they married, and within a year, Agnes gave birth to a son, William H. Howard.

During Agnes and W.D.M. Howard’s brief seven-year marriage, they contributed extensively to San Francisco’s nascent institutions, including the police and fire departments, schools and hospitals — enough so that a street south of Market was named after them. However, it was during Agnes’ second marriage, to W.D.M.’s younger brother George, that the newly configured Howard family left its biggest legacy on the mid-Peninsula community they helped create.

From 1856 until Agnes’ second husband George died in 1878, George and Agnes turned their mid-Peninsula ranch home, El Cerrito, into an epicenter of local society life and philanthropy. Their home was the gathering place of Agnes’ extended family: Her father Dr. Joseph Henry Poett, her brother Alfred Poett and her sister Julia Poett Redington and their families all lived in what is now Hillsborough. The extended Howard family became pillars of the growing community of wealthy estate holders on the Peninsula. The Howards donated the land and construction costs for St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, where both W.D.M. and George are entombed. Later, George and Agnes also donated land for the formation of the Congregational Church of San Mateo on Tilton Avenue and San Mateo Drive. Agnes’ brother Alfred, a civil engineer, laid out a number of roads still in use in Hillsborough, as well as St. John’s Cemetery in San Mateo where Agnes is interred. Perhaps the Howards’ most lasting legacy, however, resulted from their decision to hire John McLaren as El Cerrito’s landscaper. For 15 years, from 1872 to 1887, McLaren planted thousands of trees, literally transforming the native barren, dry grasslands of this area into the lush landscape of mature trees and beautiful plantings that mark the mid-Peninsula today.

During the last half of the 19th century, portions of the vast El Cerrito estate were sold to other San Franciscans, who fled San Francisco’s fog each summer to enjoy the rural, equestrian lifestyle available on the mid-Peninsula. Thus, by the time of Agnes’ death in 1893, a second generation of wealthy mid-Peninsula residents had reached adulthood.      

One of these second-generation men, Francis Newlands, decided to market a portion of his property to his prosperous peers. Newlands hired a respected architect, A. Page Brown, to build five summer "cottages” on a large block just north of where St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is now located. When the cottages did not sell, he decided to form a country club, with the hope that the club amenities would attract future homebuyers.

In 1893, Newlands convened a group of influential local men and the Burlingame Country Club was born. Not surprisingly perhaps, Agnes’ first child, William H. Howard, then 43 years old, was a founding member. The other founding members were, by and large, sons of early California titans of industry — men who made their money by finding gold and silver, by providing supplies or financing to those who did, or by constructing transportation systems to connect the new state of California with the rest of the country.

For the next two decades, from 1893 until the start of World War I, an active club and social life developed on the mid-Peninsula, centered around the Burlingame Country Club. In 1894, the club members helped finance a stylish new train station, at the base of what is now Burlingame Avenue, to receive their San Francisco guests in style. Walter S. Hobart Jr., heir to a large silver-mining fortune, introduced fox hunting to the club. Joseph D. Grant, the son of a prosperous Gold Rush merchant, helped introduce polo to the club. It became a popular club sport, especially after polo enthusiast Frank Carolan and his heiress wife, Harriett Pullman Carolan, moved to the Burlingame-Hillsborough area, which was then universally called "Burlingame.”

When the great earthquake of 1906 struck, refugees fleeing San Francisco found small lots for sale at affordable prices in a subdivision that William H. Howard (the son of Agnes and W.D.M) had made 10 years earlier. The local population grew fivefold in one year, as refugees flooded into Burlingame. To address the many changes occurring in the community, the Town of Burlingame incorporated in 1908. Two years later the wealthier families found that they did not share many of the same goals as the newly incorporated residents of Burlingame, such as paved sidewalks and street lighting. Not eager to be part of the tax base that would fund these goals, the families living west of El Camino Real incorporated the Town of Hillsborough in 1910.

The community in Hillsborough was formed by families who built summer homes to escape the fog and to enjoy gracious living and entertaining — far from the grit of urban living. Although the residents’ names and industries have changed in the last century — from mining and transportation in the early days to new entertainment-related businesses, specialty retail businesses and biotech businesses in the twenty-first century — the essence of the community has not changed. Hillsborough continues to be the place where titans of industry enjoy The Good Life: Gracious country living within a generous and civic-minded community.

Joanne Garrison is the author of "Burlingame Centennial: 1908-2008, ” available at Books, Inc. on Burlingame Avenue. Proceeds from the book help fund the Burlingame Hillsborough History Museum, located in the Burlingame Avenue train station. The museum is open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on the first Sunday of each month. Admission is free.