It’s the end of an era at Green Gables, a 74-acre estate in Woodside that served as the summer home for generations of Fleischhackers, a family long connected with San Francisco history.
Earlier this month, supporters of the nonprofit Gardens of Golden Gate Park were among the last to visit the historic property before it’s turned over to the new owners. Sold for $85 million, it’s believed to be the most expensive home sale in the Bay Area in 2025.
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The main home at Green Gables, the former summer estate of San Francisco’s philanthropic Fleischhacker family, is designed in the style of an English country cottage. (Larry Sokoloff/Bay City News)
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William “Wim” Fleishhacker led a tour of his family’s Green Gables estate. including beautiful pools, in Woodside. (Larry Sokoloff/Bay City News)
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San Francisco attorney William “Wim” Fleischhacker recalled spending summers at Green Gables, his family’s estate in Woodside, during a recent tour of the property. (Larry Sokoloff/Bay City News)
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Vicki and David Fleischhacker attended a recent tour of Green Gables, the Fleischhacker family’s summer estate, which was recently sold for $85 million. (Larry Sokoloff/Bay City News)
William “Wim” Fleischhacker, a San Francisco attorney, and his mother Vicki guided visitors on the tour. He recalled spending summers at Green Gables, eating breakfast with his grandparents and swimming in its pools.
Family patriarch David Fleischhacker, 88, said the estate’s stunning views of the forested Santa Cruz Mountains reminded him “a little bit of Scotland.”
Green Gables’ main house is styled like an English thatch-roofed cottage. The family compound was designed by architect Charles Sumner Greene, who also built the landmark Gamble House in Pasadena.
The two-story, 29-room, 10,000-square-foot manor built by Mortimer and Bella Fleischhacker in 1912 had been on the market for six years. At one point, it was listed for $135 million. The new owners haven’t been revealed, but observers believe it’s a billionaire with connections to the technology industry.
The property took many years to sell in part because it came with a conservation easement that prevents the new owners from making substantial changes to the property. With the easement, the property can’t be subdivided.
Wim Fleishhacker said the new owners will “obviously have some ideas of their own and they’ll have to make sure it is consistent with whatever the easement says.”
Over the last 100 years, descendants of Mortimer Fleishhacker Sr. —who cofounded the Great Western Power utility company, a precursor of Pacific Gas and Electric—have built about 10 other homes on the property. Green Gables also includes extensive gardens, a large swimming pool and a stunning Roman pool reached by a staircase surrounded by arches, modeled after Hadrian’s Villa and Tivoli Gardens near Rome.
The Fleischhackers were among San Francisco’s early philanthropists, supporting such landmarks as the Fleischhacker Pool. Once the largest swimming pool in the United States, it closed in 1971; today’s it’s the site of the San Francisco Zoo.
Since 1947, the nonprofit Fleischhacker Foundation in San Francisco has supported arts and education programs in the Bay Area.
Green Gables has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. One home on the property was designed by architect William Wurster, a former dean at the University of California, Berkeley. Another residence was rented by former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her family when she was on trial in San Jose in 2021-22. The 1999 Disney movie “Bicentennial Man” starring Robin Williams as a robot also was filmed at the estate.
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