By Clarence Cromwell
After years in storage, extensive repairs and a new home in Oak Meadow Park await the old cupola from the Lyndon estate carriage house.
A century ago, the cupola crowned the carriage house on the Wood Road estate of John Lyndon, a prominent businessman and landowner. Lyndon built the carriage house and his three-story mansion in 1887 for about $12,000.
Repairs for the historic tower are scheduled to take place this summer and are expected to be finished by the end of September. The town is accepting bids from contractors to repair the decayed 20-foot wooden tower and set it on a foundation in the park, a plan the Town Council approved in May 1994.
The Los Gatos Downtown Association, which helped acquire a $53,800 county grant to pay for repairs, originally asked the town to build a gazebo topped by the cupola in the town square. But a gazebo would have been too expensive, said Scott Baker, the town's director of building and engineering services.
The cupola hasn't been publicly displayed in more than two decades.
After the estate was demolished in the 1970s, the cupola stood at the southwest corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street, the former site of Lyndon's Los Gatos hotel.
When Lyndon Plaza was built at that corner in 1975, the cupola moved to the Los Gatos residence of Lyndon's great-grandson, James Farwell. Farwell later donated the cupola to the San Jose Historical Museum. It rested in storage at the museum until Bill Wulf, Los Gatos' self-appointed historian, spotted it one day in the early 1990s and urged the town's historical preservation commission to get it back.
Now, the cupola lies on one side atop wooden skids in the town's maintenance yard. The years in storage left it decayed and falling apart at the seams.
Contractors will have to reattach the roof and one sagging side of the tower. They'll also replace or reattach some woodwork details that have broken or disappeared, and paint the weathered structure.
A new sheet-metal roof will replace the rust-gnawed and buckled roofing that tops the cupola now.
And a new steeple and cast-metal spire, totaling seven feet six inches will cover the gaping foot-square hole atop the cupola, where the missing steeple used to attach.
When repairs are complete, the cupola will rest on a monument that invites viewers to sit and look.
The monument will be hidden away at the back of Oak Meadow Park, surrounded by planter boxes and by a low, wrought-iron railing, adorned with scrollwork and finials. Park visitors will be able to view it comfortably from nearby benches to be added for that purpose.
Floodlights will illuminate the cupola at night.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, June 5, 1996.
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