Hotel Montgomery

Archive for July, 2011

San Jose is located in the sunny state California. The town has a lot of historical buildings to offer and one of which is the Hotel Montgomery. The Hotel Montgomery was built in 1911 by the well-known businessman T.S. Montgomery, who is sometimes called the father of the downtown, and the local architect William Binder designed the hotel. The historic building is located in downtown San Jose and is famous throughout the whole US.

The Classical Revival style and the handsome façade, which is brick-colored pergola, are the signature of the Hotel Montgomery. The building is u-shaped and has six balconies with balustrades. Originally the hotel had 142 rooms, a restaurant, a ballroom and two dinning rooms. Unfortunately the hotel was destroyed during the Loma Prieta Earth Quake in 1989.
The hotel is considered historically significant because of its early reinforcement of concrete construction, architectural style and its ties to important people in the towns’ history. The hotel is on the California Register of Historical Places and is eligible for the National Register.

The hotel had to close down after suffering extensive damage during the earth quake, but it was relocated in 2000. It was relocated only 186 feet from its previous location to First and San Carlos Streets. The move attracted a lot of media attention because of the significance the building has to San Jose.
A Redevelopment Agency hired an architect to redesign the first floor of the original building, which had to been demolished prior to the move. The first level included an elegant ballroom, which was torn down because of space limitations. An Architectural Resources Group documented design features and drawings and salvaged historical material for the inside of the hotel. These will be available for the architect, who redesigns the hotel. There are plans discussed to restore the building to a boutique hotel.
When staying in San Jose one should definitely take a look on the historic building. It is important to the history of the town and its inhabitants. One can get a better feeling for the town by exploring its past and Hotel Montgomery is part of it.

Today there are 2.5 million people living in the so called Silicon Valley. The valley includes 30 towns and is known as the world’s biggest high-tech zone. Silicon Valley is contained by San Francisco Bay in the east, Santa Cruz Mountains in the west and the Coast Range in the southeast. Its importance to the US developed over centuries.

The first significant event happened in 1848 when gold was discovered in the valley near Sacramento. After the discovery the Gold Rush began. People from all over the world came to the valley to find happiness and wealth. In 1849 the first ten thousand gold-seekers arrived in California. Later they were known as the “Forty-niners”.

In 1850 California becomes a state and because of the Gold Rush many nicknames were given. “The Golden State”, “The Land of Milk and Honey” and “The El Dorado State” are just a few examples. Suffering from violent disagreements over business during the first decades, the California Civil Code was adopted in 1872. It includes a special provision guaranteeing the freedom of employees in California.

In 1910 Lee de Forrest, the inventor of the triode, arrived in the San Francisco Bay area. This was later seen as the starting point of Silicon Valleys process of transforming into the worlds’ knowledge base of electronics. Silicon Valleys’ development was boosted by a number of defense contracts in World War 1 as well as World War 2.

In 1951 the Stanford Industrial Park was established. The high-tech center is working closely with the Stanford University. Five years later William Shockley, co-inventor of the semiconductor triode, founded the Shockley Semiconductor. A few years later eight of his employees left the company and founded Fairchild Semiconductor and just a few years after that, employees of this company left to found Intel. Within 20 years different employees of Shockley founded 65 new enterprises and made Silicon Valley the high-tech capital of the US.

In 1971 the term Silicon Valley was used for the area and became the official name for the valley shortly after that. Without all these great inventors coming to Silicon Valley and founding their own enterprises, the valley would not have as much significance to world as it has today.