Clik here to view.
San Pedro Square is a lively and walkable section of downtown San Jose, with many bars and restaurants. It’s also home to two of San Jose’s oldest buildings, both near West St. John Street and the food halls at San Pedro Square Market. New residential high-rises surround them.
The oldest building, the two-room Gonzales/Peralta Adobe, dates from 1797. Across the street is the Fallon House, built in the mid-1850s. It’s the former home of one of the city’s more colorful residents, Thomas Fallon, who was San Jose’s 10th mayor in 1859-60.
Clik here to view.
The houses can be visited on tours led by the nonprofit History San Jose or contemplated over a beverage or meal in the food hall’s outdoor courtyard.
Docent Scott Herhold, a retired San Jose Mercury News columnist, led a recent weekend tour that began at the adobe. The house, which got its name from its first owners, is San Jose’s oldest standing building. At one time, it was one of 27 adobes in the area.
Herhold knows what stories about the adobe make the biggest impression: “Kids are impressed—or depressed —by the blood on the floor to keep down the dust,” he said.
However, there’s no sign of blood on the floor today, just normal dirt.
Both houses are outfitted with furniture from the 1800s.
Clik here to view.
Outside the adobe house is a wall that remains from a 1980s venture between singer Linda Ronstadt and Tom McEnery, the former San Jose mayor whose family owns San Pedro Square Market. The wall, which is made with straw and mud, was a prototype for a building project that Ronstadt wanted to create in Arizona, Herhold said.
Tour groups cross the street to the Fallon House, named for owners Carmela and Thomas Fallon. Thomas Fallon, an immigrant from Northern Ireland, raised the American flag over San Jose during the Mexican-American war of 1846, and went on to become San Jose’s mayor.
For several decades, a statue of Thomas Fallon on a horse was located a few blocks away. In 2023, after criticism over his role in taking California from Mexico, the statue was taken down.
While the Fallons’ two-story Victorian home seems uninspiring on the outside, inside it’s an impressive 15-room structure. Restored by the city in the 1990s for $5 million, it presents a picture of what life was like for a wealthy family in that era. (The Fallons ultimately divorced, and Carmela moved to San Francisco, where she was a successful businesswoman.)
Clik here to view.
The house was expanded around 1900 into a 25-room hotel for immigrant Italian workers. Later, a famed bar opened in its basement, one that Herhold used to hang out at as a reporter.
“Manny’s Cellar was such a beloved dive bar,” he said.
Today the cellar is empty, with a few photos of old San Jose on the walls. The real action is at street level, back at San Pedro Square Market, where on a recent weekend crowds gathered and musicians played.
The Gonzales/Peralta Adobe-Fallon House Historic Site is at 175 W. St. John St., San Jose. Tours ($10-$13) are offered at noon and 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Visit historysanjose.org.
The post San Jose historic houses abut modern downtown meeting, eating place appeared first on Local News Matters.