City of San Ramon Completes Seismic Foundation Retrofit and Conservatory Glazing at 1877 Boone Glass House

Historic preservation specialists with the City of San Ramon Parks and Community Services Department and docents from the San Ramon Historic Foundation completed a seismic foundation retrofit, Victorian conservatory glazing restoration, and accessible orchard walkway upgrade on Sunday afternoon at the 1877 David Glass House at Forest Home Farms Historic Park at 19953 San Ramon Valley Boulevard in San Ramon. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and gifted to the city in 1997 by pioneer walnut grower Ruth Quayle Boone, the 16-acre municipal heritage park preserves twenty-two historic farm structures and a turn-of-the-century tractor museum.

To protect the two-story 1877 Italianate-Victorian residence against Hayward and Calaveras fault ground shaking without disturbing its original hand-planed redwood clapboard siding or interior plaster medallions, structural preservation crews underpinned the brick perimeter foundation with reinforced concrete grade beams and installed thirty-eight concealed steel sill-plate shear anchors. On the south-facing Victorian conservatory porch that gives the Glass House its name, glaziers replaced cracked panes with custom UV-filtering laminated restoration glass that blocks 98 percent of fabric-fading ultraviolet rays.

Outside the residence, crews graded 950 linear feet of stabilized decomposed-granite walkways through the heritage Franquette walnut orchard, connecting the Welcome Center and Tractor Barn to a new flush cedar wheelchair lift concealed behind the back kitchen veranda. Ten bronze interpretive lecterns with QR audio tours narrate daily ranch life in the San Ramon Valley between 1850 and 1950.

The $415,000 historic preservation program was approved by the San Ramon City Council through the Historic Facilities Capital Reserve and San Ramon Historic Foundation grants. Visitors can check free Saturday guided tour schedules on the City of San Ramon Forest Home Farms Portal.