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REBORN: Leland Jr.’s
Sacramento birthplace will now host visiting VIPs.
Marilyn Sommerdorf |
When globe-trotting nabobs
and industrial titans come to town, where does the state
of California entertain them? Beginning next year, the
answer will be the newly refurbished Leland Stanford
Mansion—four stories of Victorian stateliness
located at Eighth and N streets in Sacramento. After
years of fund raising, a private-public partnership
is wrapping up some $20 million of restoration to the
mansion.
Rainy seasons in the ’90s almost finished off
the leaky 147-year-old building, the birthplace in 1868
of University namesake Leland Stanford Jr. Efforts to
maintain the home as a museum had mostly floundered,
but after Gayle Wilson, ’64, wife of former Gov.
Pete Wilson, proposed reviving the mansion for official
events, fund raising picked up. Preservationists and
state groups worked out a way the house could remain
open for public tours as part of the state park system
yet also provide meeting rooms, office space and banquet
facilities for a state that needed to wine and dine
business leaders and dignitaries in a style befitting
the world’s fifth-largest economy.
Construction—from the new roof down to the custom
carpets—was mostly finished in June. Landscaping,
including Victorian gardens close to the house and more
contemporary plantings toward an outdoor reception area
big enough for 200 people, will be completed as the
year progresses. Some rooms are being maintained as
museum space to honor the Stanfords and the years when
the building was a Catholic home for foundlings. Charlotte
Shultz, the state’s newly appointed chief of protocol,
will have offices on the third floor. First Lady Maria
Shriver asked Wolfgang Puck to consult on the catering
kitchen. A publicized search for the home’s original
furniture has turned up a dining room set of the Stanfords’,
and experts from several museums are seeking early California
paintings for the walls.
Susan Peters, chair of the Leland Stanford Mansion
Foundation and a recently elected Sacramento County
supervisor, credits many people as champions of the
building, including the first foundation president,
her late husband, Peter A. McCuen, ’56, ms ’57,
phd ’62, a business executive who fostered the
economic development of Sacramento, and former Ambassador
L.W. “Bill” Lane, ’42, a former publisher
of Sunset magazine. Peters, who looks forward
to the deals and news events that will be consummated
and celebrated at the mansion, thinks it soon will be
“the most photographed building in California.
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