Words by Dylan Lanier
Menlo Park’s Sharon Heights is one of many charming Peninsula neighborhoods created by carving up a sprawling country estate. Its origins are somewhat less idyllic than its current contours might suggest. The money for the Sharon Estate came from the notorious Gilded Age mining tycoon William Sharon. Elected to represent Nevada, William was deemed one of history’s worst U.S. senators due to his reluctance to actually travel to the Capitol and participate. His busy love life was the subject of a scandalous lawsuit brought by his mistress and breathlessly reported on in the newspapers. William’s son and heir Frederick enjoyed San Francisco high society with his wife Louise Breckinridge before the couple relocated to Paris for almost 20 years, where they developed a taste for the era’s pick-me-up of choice: cocaine.
Returning to the City after the Great Earthquake of 1906, Fredrick hastened to join his elite peers and develop a luxurious weekend retreat. He hired New York architect George Kelham to design the ultimate country estate on 600 acres in what is now West Menlo Park. The Sharon Estate’s redwood-shingled “cottage”—a precursor to the planned main house—boasted lavish gardens, tapestries from Europe, an elegant ballroom and eight butlers, according to Menlo Park: Beyond the Gate. Frederick’s cocaine addiction probably contributed to his untimely death in 1915 at age 56, dooming plans for the main house, which was never built. After Louise’s death, the sprawling estate was eventually sold. In 1957, developers Duncan McDonald and Mark Radin conceived a plan to subdivide the property into a residential community, complete with a shopping center and a park surrounding an artificial lake. So if you find yourself strolling through the peaceful streets of Sharon Heights, consider its opulent early days and the Nevada silver mines that funded its transformation from rolling countryside to a playground for San Francisco’s elite.