The race to save Ralston Hall

“I’m confident we will meet the Dec. 31 deadline,” Hernandez said during a tour of the mansion, site of scores of wedding receptions through the decades. “We are nearing 75 percent of our goal.”

Interesting that Hernandez used the “homestretch” racing term. The aforementioned mural just a few yards from the Caltrain tracks in San Mateo depicts Ralston in a carriage racing a steam train, something legend says he frequently did. The work by Nicholas Molley and Bobby Duncan covers a side of the Chilton Autobody facility formerly known as Pennington Auto Body and Paint on First Avenue right next to the downtown San Mateo Caltrain station. Eric Pennington donated most of the $47,000 that went toward the 30-foot-by-100-foot mural.

Taube, founder of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture and the Taube Family Foundation, will contribute much of the money needed to restore Ralston Hall, which dates back to 1868. There are other big names connected to the fund drive. Bob and Marie Damrell Gallo donated $1 million. In all, $20 million will be needed to finish the renovation and seismic retrofitting of the mansion that was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

Ralston, who died in 1875, lived and entertained in a four-story mansion of 100 rooms lighted by 300 gas jets that glittered in crystal chandeliers, including those in a spectacular ballroom and others near gracious staircases.

Architecturally, Ralston Hall is a merger of Victorian, Italianate and Steamboat Gothic styles, the last easy to spot in the entrance hallway which resembles the promenade deck of a river boat.

“Ralston loved steamboats and that’s carried throughout much of the building,” said Denise Winkelstein, the university’s director of Advancement Events.

The structure covers 55,000 square feet and features an opera box entry modeled after the Opera Garnier in Paris, and a mirrored ballroom inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. There are also more than 20 custom designed French chandeliers, updated to electricity of course, but now in storage.

With a bit of imagination, it is not hard to envision the days when Ralston used his mansion to entertain the likes of Ulysses S. Grant, Mark Twain, Admiral David Farragut, Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford. Later, Ralston Hall would touch the lives of thousands of other less celebrated people. Before it shut, the hall, in any given year, saw up to 40,000 people pass through its doors to work, teach and attend meetings, concerts, weddings and more. Those people include Winkelstein, who graduated from Notre Dame in 1974.

“To me, it is more than a building,” she said. “It is a place where so many memories have been made and holds a special place in my heart.” Those memories included her wedding.

“It was the best Jewish wedding ever held in Ralston Hall,” she said.