The name Fleishhacker is well-known in San Francisco.
The largest outdoor saltwater swimming pool in the world, built near Ocean Beach in 1925, once carried the name of the man who funded its construction, Herbert Fleishhacker. And Herbert’s brother, Mortimer Fleishhacker, was a banker who founded Anglo California Bank in San Francisco and the Great Western Power Co. in Oakland.
In 1907, Mortimer took a trip south to a largely undeveloped swath of land now associated with Silicon Valley and fell in love with it. He spent the next few years assembling nine adjoining lots to create a family compound in what is modern-day Woodside.
In 1911, he commissioned leading Arts and Craft architects Charles Sumner Greene and his brother, Henry Mather Greene, to design a home for the property. The Greenes modified the style to create a nearly 10,000-square-foot home reminiscent of a thatch-roofed cottage in the English countryside. Six other homes were later built on the 74-acre site.
Now the entire property, known as Green Gables, could be yours. Christie’s International Real Estate and Compass Real Estate listed the property for $135 million Friday as part of a specially arranged collaboration.
If it sells anywhere near that price, it likely would be the most expensive residential property ever to sell in the Bay Area. The most expensive ever was the 2012 off-market deal in which Softbank founder Masayoshi Son bought the nine-acre Woodside estate at 360 Mountain Home Road for $117.5 million, according to a 2018 report from Property Shark . For a while, that was the most expensive in California, but several L.A. mansions have since bested that .
They brokerages are marketing Green Gables as either a family property with its seven separate residences or as an exclusive corporate retreat with on-site recreation.
The ritzy compound has long been a gathering place for global dignitaries, including European royalty, senators, congressmen, governors, business leaders and creative luminaries. In 1965, the United Nations selected Green Gables as the site for its 20th anniversary commemoration gala.
All seven residences are private and protected from each other. Noteworthy among them is a 1930s home designed by renowned modernist architect William Wurster, who designed Ghirardelli Square and 555 California St. in San Francisco.
The site also features a dramatic Roman pool, a stone tea house, three swimming pools, an edible garden, a tennis court and an artist’s studio used by matriarch Bella Gerstle Fleishhacker.
A 50,000-square-foot, 20-foot-deep reservoir — sourced by an underground spring and winter runoff — irrigates 90% of the estate’s gardens. The property also includes the rights to the nearby Kings Mountain watershed, complete with an easement and deed for use of up to 30 million gallons of water per year.
“Rare in its beauty and scope, the property was purchased six generations ago and held by the same family, the Fleishhackers,” Dan Conn, CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate, said in a statement. “The family has carefully protected and maintained this grand estate ever since, which presents an increasingly rare opportunity to acquire an abundance of land […]
