On Monday I, along with a handful of professional news reporters and a number of passersby, watched in awe as carriage after carriage were rolled out from the first floor of the recently completed Taube Family Carriage House and Automobile Gallery, secured to a metal platform, and then hoisted via a large crane to the building’s second floor. In all, a dozen carriages (plus a couple of large antique mirrors) successfully made the journey, although I was only able to see the final six, having spent the first part of the morning doing my volunteer job at the library.

The carriages, which are owned by the San Mateo County Historical Association, originated from various historic estates around the county, including Filoli. Not having a proper place to really show them off, the county for years has kept the carriages locked away in a warehouse in San Mateo. But with the construction of this new wing of the San Mateo County History Museum, they finally have a permanent home, where they can be enjoyed by all.

As the name implies, this new wing is both a carriage house and an automobile gallery. The carriages will be arrayed on the building’s second floor (with the antique mirrors so positioned as to provide museum patrons with a full view of some of the carriages); eventually, a collection of classic automobiles will be displayed on the ground floor. But the automobiles won’t be installed until the museum’s new natural history wing — which will be located in the small addition squeezed between the Carriage House and the museum’s main building — receives its contents. I was told that some of the items to be exhibited there are large enough that they need to be brought in through where the automobiles will eventually be displayed.

As you may have noticed, the new wing’s second-floor is taller than the first. While most were OK, one of the carriages proved to be too tall to roll in and out of that ground-floor door. Accordingly, the body of the carriage had to be removed from its chassis when it was first moved into the building:

Because the museum staff had a crane handy, and because reassembling the carriage would be easier to do outside rather than inside, before this particular carriage was lifted to the second floor, the crane was used to lift the body of the carriage and, with the aid of a number of people helping to position it, lower the body onto its chassis:

The two pieces were then bolted together, after which the crane delivered the completed carriage to the second floor.

I should also note that this latest addition to the county’s history museum also has a third floor. It consists largely of an open space that can be used for community and special events and will, I believe, be rentable for parties, wedding receptions, and the like.

All in all, I found Monday’s activities exciting to watch. I’m looking forward to seeing the carriages on display, but for that I’ll have to wait: this new section of the county museum isn’t slated to open to the public until Saturday, November 7. At that time, for the price of a single ticket not only will museum patrons be able to explore the Taube Family Carriage House and Automobile Museum, they’ll also be able to see the museum’s new natural history exhibits along with a handful of other new exhibits in the main part of the museum. Plus, they’ll be able to tour one of the Peninsula’s oldest mansions: the jewel-like Lathrop-Connor-Mansfield House, which back in May of 2019 was moved to the corner of Marshall and Hamilton streets, just behind the history museum and now just beside the carriage house:

During a break in the action, I took a quick walk down Marshall Street to Main Street in order to check on the activity I’d noticed down there. There, on a block bounded by Marshall Street, Main Street, Broadway, and Walnut Street — where Wells Fargo Bank used to do business in a stand-alone building — the massive 1900 Broadway office/retail project is soon to get underway. For now, work has begun along Walnut Street and in the former bank’s back parking lot to relocate some existing underground utility lines:

Soon, the old bank building will be torn down. But not before the one-block section of Spring Street that today slices through the project site is closed. That is happening on September 1:

(The electronic signs at either end of the block say “Spring St closed between Walnut & Main starting 9/1/26”.) Note that this is not just a closure for the duration of construction; this is a permanent change. Although many of us will have learn to adjust to the new street configuration, on the plus side it’ll simplify what today is this five-way intersection, turning it into a simpler, and surely safer, four-way one:

At some point, the section of Walnut Street that runs behind the bank (which is temporarily closed for construction) will be expanded from one lane to two; right now it is a one-lane, one-way street that many have probably never driven on. But since the new building’s underground parking garage will be accessed from Walnut Street, and because the closure of that one block of Spring Street may cause an increase in the amount of traffic on Walnut over time, the added width is absolutely necessary.

All of that was just my Monday. On Tuesday, I took a long walk that took me down to Woodside Plaza, to ELCO Yards, and then down to the Stanford in Redwood City campus. As I made my way along Alameda de las Pulgas, I noted that the intersection at Alameda and Vera Avenue has been rebuilt:

This is undoubtedly to enhance the safety of students living west of Alameda who walk or ride to and from Roosevelt School. I didn’t see any indication that flashing beacons will be installed at this intersection, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are added soon.

Before checking in on ELCO Yards, I took a quick peek at 112 Vera Ave. Things are progressing nicely there:

Just behind me, I noticed that a new hair salon — “The Alchemy Room” — is moving into a large retail space on the ground floor of the Franklin Street Apartment Homes building.

When I next walked the one block to ELCO Yards, I discovered that LearningLinks — the “early education and preschool” facility in the new building out on El Camino Real is now open, despite the “coming soon!” sign still in the window (the preschool is on the side of the building away from El Camino):

If you are at all interested in a place like this for your child (or, like me, are just curious to see inside and learn more about them), LearningLinks’ website has a great virtual tour that shows off the facility and presents their programs and philosophy.

Close by, over on lot D where one of the large apartment buildings is soon to be built, I noticed a large pile of structural steel along Beech Street:

And on the edge of the adjoining lot where the second apartment building is to be constructed, along Lathrop Street, I was interested to see that some large boxes that were seemingly added to hide a portion of the recycled water pipeline have the words “Redwood Creek Trail” on them. That trail is slated to run between El Camino Real and Lathrop Street (at least), on the south side of the creek, between the creek and the new apartment building.

Down on the Stanford campus, the parking garage that is being built to accompany the new nine-story medical office building on Broadway is finally somewhat visible, the underground portion having presumably been completed:

Work continues on the portion of the property between the new medical building and the existing ones, where the driveways will lead to the buildings and to the parking garage:

That’s it for this week. Until next time…!