A Rare Opportunity with a Large Wedge Shaped Lot

The tree lined streets of downtown Willow Glen offer a small-town feel nestled in the city of San José - the 10th largest city in the nation. Stroll downtown Willow Glen and find sidewalk cafes, coffee shops, boutiques, vintage shops, strollers parked outside unique kid stores, and doggie water bowls everywhere. Willow Glen is a town where you can do everything! Grab breakfast, lunch, or dinner at any one of many popular restaurants, or utilize services from a selection of small businesses that conveniently dot Lincoln Avenue. An interesting local fact, Lincoln Avenue was renamed from "Willow Glen Road" in 1865, in honor of President Abraham Lincoln.  

Willow Glen came to be in the mid-1800s as the Rancho de los Coches and Rancho San Juan Bautista, Mexican land grants adjacent to the San José pueblo. Don Antonio Suñol, who owned Rancho de los Coches and built the Roberto-Suñol Adobe, is considered to be the founder of the community.  The community was named for the marshy wet area between the Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek, which were abundant in willows and cattails, unusual for the rest of the region, hence “Willow Glen”. By the 1860s this small unincorporated community needed its first school, and Willow Glen Elementary School was founded in 1863 on land donated by Ira Cottle.  

Much of Willow Glen was laid out by Frank Lewis and Isaac Bird, the namesake of "Bird Avenue". In 1860, Lewis dug the channel between Willow Street and Curtner Avenue that carries the Guadalupe River to this day. That channel effectively drained the marsh and opened Willow Glen for farming. By the late 1800s, Willow Glen was generally considered one of the most prized locations in all the Santa Clara Valley for raising wheat, barley, hay, tobacco and hops. By 1880, plots of Willow Glen farmland were priced nearly 10 times higher than similar plots in the valley.

Willow Glen continued as an unincorporated community until the 1920s, when the City of San José ordered the Southern Pacific Railroad to re-route their trunk line, which at that time traveled down Fourth Street. Southern Pacific proposed re-routing down Lincoln Avenue. To block that attempt, Willow Glen incorporated as a city in 1927. With the Lincoln Avenue route off the table, the railroad then re-routed through a then unincorporated area now known as North Willow Glen, where its principal user is now Caltrain. In 1936, Willow Glen sought to become part of San José and became so in 1938.

1272 Vernon Avenue is located in the heart of the “Willow Glen Orchard Tract”. This housing tract was proposed and laid out in May 1927, and the home was constructed in 1939. This home, the neighborhood, and the street it's located on are steeped in Willow Glen history and remain today as a reassuring and relaxing reminder of the slower pace of Santa Clara Valley's past and provides a balance to our fast paced world we find ourselves in today.