James Clair Flood’s Great White Elephant

Flood was the most unpopular of the partners because they thought he was manipulating the stocks. Flood and O’Brien began acting independently of Fair and Mackay and formed the Bank of Nevada after William Sharon and William Ralston and their Bank of California failed while trying to keep the Bank of Nevada afloat. After Flood’s mining experience in silver, real estate became his main concern in San Francisco.

While living in San Francisco, Flood built a mansion at 1000 California St. on Nob Hill. It was the first brownstone west of the Mississippi. The brownstone was shipped from a quarry in Portland, Connecticut around Cape Horn and built at the corner of California Street and Mason Avenue with architects Willis Polk and Augustus Laver. It was the only building beside the Fairmont Hotel that survived the 1906 fire. It was eventually bought by and became the Pacific Union Club.

But what do you do when you have more money that you dreamed of and you still yearn to impress people enough so that they remember you when you’re gone? As was the habit of many other wealthy men who achieved his status, he decided to build a monument for everyone to gaze in amazement. He purchased a farm on Middlefield Road and bought more land to equal 600 acres surrounding his mansion. He hired architects and builders and began a magnificent three-story building. He found towers excited him so he built a number of towers on this carpenter’s Gothic masterpiece. This made the mansion about three stories high when added up and he named it “Linden Towers.” He had delicately carved fancy work all over and then he painted the mansion white. It glistened in the sun but it was impressive enough to have visitors call it a magnificent white birthday cake.

Stables were finished in rare polished woods, silver harnesses for the horses which he had plenty of along with fine carriages that impressed everybody. Flood died in 1889 and he left his “white elephant” to his daughter. She in turn made it a gift to the University of California. The university decided to resell it to her brother. He kept it until his death in 1926. Due to its high taxes and upkeep, the furniture was auctioned off and the land sold. The mansion was demolished and the land to become a residential section of Menlo Park.

Rediscovering the Peninsula by Darold Fredricks appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal.