Mortimer Fleishhacker House

Mortimer Fleishhacker Sr. (1866–1953) was a lumber, paper, banking and hydroelectric power entrepreneur and he co-founded (with his brother Herbert Fleishhacker) the Great Western Power, which later became part of Pacific Gas and Electric and City Electric Company, American River Electric Company, Truckee River General Electric Company.[5][6][7] He served as a director of the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, the Museum of Modern Art, Temple Emanu-El, the Hebrew Orphanage, and others.[8] Fleishhacker had a home at 2418 Pacific Street in San Francisco, California.[8]

In 1911, Fleishhacker Sr. and his wife Bella Gerstle Fleishhacker (1875–1963), commissioned Charles Sumner Greene of the architectural firm Greene and Greene to design a country home for them on a 45 acre property.[2][9] This was the largest of all Greene and Greene designs.[7] The interior of the house was designed by Elsie de Wolfe of New York and the San Francisco design house of Vickery, Atkins and Torrey.[10]

When designing the home, Greene also took in to account the design of the landscaping and the driveway.[11][12] The main house is two stories tall, and was created in an English manor-style with an imitation thatch roof, a gunite exterior, and consisting of ten bedrooms.[7][13]

The garden was Italian style and features four levels of terracing and a lily pond, a Roman reflecting pool, and a piano-shaped swimming pool.[7][11] This may have been the first free-form swimming pool designed in California. The property's rolling green lawns were inspired by the Fountains Abbey of Studley Royal Park in 18th-century England, which Greene had visited in 1909.[12] The garden has natural materials used and design elements that compliment the landscape such as terraces, walls, arcades, balustrades, and planting urns.[14]