Intel co-founder spent $15M renovating this historic Woodside estate now on the market for $29.5M

Sandwiched among formal gardens, redwood groves and more than 1,000 acres of protected open space sits the historic Phleger Estate’s 98-year-old home, known as Mountain Meadow. The home is one of a handful of remaining “great estates” from the early 20th century that once dotted the hills of Woodside. 

Though the home was built in 1927, the original estate property embodies generations of California history spanning more than 250 years. The area was originally the site of a Native American settlement, became part of a 12,000-acre Mexican land grant, housed Redwood sawmills from the logging era in the 1800s and has ties to the Bourn family who built the adjacent Filoli mansion. 

Located at 100  Cañada Road, Mountain Meadow most recently belonged to Silicon Valley tech pioneer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who purchased the home and surrounding 24 acres with his wife, Betty, for $6 million in 1993 as part of an effort to preserve and protect the historic Phleger Estate from being redeveloped. The nonprofit land conservation group Peninsula Open Space Trust purchased the rest of the original  1,315-acre estate from the Phleger family and transferred the property to the National Park Service to become a public park. 

Over the years, the Moores spent $15 million meticulously restoring and improving the approximately 9,300-square-foot  Tudor Revival-style home and surrounding gardens, which they primarily used as their private retreat. 

The home is now on the market for the first time in more than 30 years with an asking price of $29.5 million. 

Gordon died at age 94 in March 2023, and Betty died at age 95 in December of the same year. They gifted the Woodside property to the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which is now selling it, according to Compass real estate firm. The property is protected under a conservation easement, which means there can be no large-scale development on it.  

“Mountain Meadow was a refuge for the Moore family, a place of peace, and reflection and a deep connection to the rich landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area,” Eric Normington, POST’s senior operations manager,  said in an email. ” It is ready for a new steward who shares the Moores’ love of the natural world and who embraces this rare opportunity to become a part of the property’s unique legacy.”  

A Tudor Revival home by a California modernist

The house has five bedrooms, seven baths, a temperature-controlled wine cellar, a library, a media room, an elevator and 2,495-square-foot guest house, according to a description of the property by ColdwellBankerLuxury.com. 

The property also comes with century-old gardens that feature redwood groves, heritage roses, a 1-acre apple orchard and a year-round creek.  In addition, the grounds include a tennis court, greenhouse and a pool with changing rooms , along with a 16-car garage and workshop, and 16 wells that provide water for both domestic use and irrigation, according to the property description. 

Built for George Eastman, vice president of Spring Valley Water Company and a close associate of Filoli’s William Bourn, Mountain Meadow (known as Summerholm at the time) was the debut residential project of famed architect Gardner Dailey, who became internationally known for breaking new ground with his modern residential designs in the Bay Area during the 1930s. Dailey had just left the Willis Polk firm, which designed the Filoli estate. 

Mountain Meadow’s Tudor Revival design blends classic architectural form with the natural contours of the land, emphasizing simplicity and symmetry. Dailey intentionally situated the home on the property so that beautiful views could be obtained of both redwoods and oak woodlands, according to the National Park Service’s history of the Phleger Estate.

The estate’s landscape was created by Bruce Porter, a celebrated artist and designer best-known for his work at Filoli. He designed the estate’s original layout, which  includes formal terraces, stone walls and plantings that mirror the aesthetics and structure of Filoli’s gardens. The result is a property that feels both cultivated and organic, with thoughtful transitions from indoor to outdoor spaces.

Landscape architect John McLaren,who designed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and was declared the “greatest horticulturist of the West” in 1930 by Sunset Magazine, later added the rhododendron dell along the creek, while Thomas Church, a pioneer of modern landscape architecture, redesigned the south terrace and added the swimming pool in the late 1940s during the Phleger family’s ownership, according to information provided by Compass.

Disrepair and revival 

By the time the Moores purchased the home, it had fallen into disrepair. Its only water supply was a garden hose running from a spring box through a seasonal creek and up into the woods to a pump house and then to a storage tank, according to former POST president Walter Moore (who is no relation to Gordon and Betty Moore).  To make matters worse,  the house stood less than 200 yards from the San Andreas Fault on a dirt road, he said. 

Despite these considerable obstacles, the Moores purchased the house  to help POST preserve the parcel after the National Park Service decided it did not want to include the dilapidated home with the rest of the estate as part of its public parklands. 

To maintain the original character of the property, the Moores sourced authentic period materials to renovate and restore the home. This included decommissioning local homes of the same era to salvage window glass, fixtures, fittings and other architectural elements, according to information provided by Compass. 

They upgraded the electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems and expanded the kitchen but preserved original elements such as redwood paneling and five wood-burning fireplaces. They restored the original call-button system for staff, and there is a vault in the butler’s pantry where early owners of the house stored valuables like silver, jewelry and china, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“There’s a timelessness here,” Erika Demma of Compass, who is co-listing the property with Hugh Cornish of Coldwell Banker Realty, said in an email.

Before Mountain Meadow

Before the 1927-era home and surrounding property became an estate, the land passed through many people and many uses in California’s early history.

Originally, the site is believed to have been occupied by the Lamchin local tribe of the Ohlone group of people. According to the National Park Service, mission records indicate that about 350 people from the Lamchin tribe lived in villages in the region, including portions of the land that became the Phleger Estate.

 In the 1769, when the first European explorers – members of the Gaspar de Portola party – encountered the area, it is possible that they camped on the land that became Phleger Estate, as they made note of the great Redwood trees in the region that later became part of the 12,000-acre Mexican land grant Rancho Canada de Raymundo, which encompassed the watershed area from Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir, south including nearly all of Woodside up to Portola Road and, roughly east from Cañada Road to Skyline Road, according to the National Park Service.

The property was then the site of sawmills and a great deal of logging during the 1800s. A portion of the property eventually passed into the hands of the Spring Valley Water Co. and two country estates were commissioned by its president William Bourn — Filoli to the north, where the Bourns lived, and Summerholm (Mountain Meadow) to the south, with a mansion designed for the company’s vice president, George Eastman.

In 1935, the 1,232-acre estate was bought by powerful San Francisco attorney Herman Phleger and his wife, Mary Elena, and renamed Mountain Meadow.

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