Realtors are well-known for “expanding” the boundaries of popular neighborhoods like San Jose’s Willow Glen and Rose Garden. But the residents of the distinctive Hanchett Park neighborhood, a largely unknown enclave of period California Craftsmen, Italian Revivals and Prairie-style homes, are tired, quite frankly, of being referred to as “the lower Rose Garden.”

Hanchett Park’s graceful streetscape design, including European-like traffic roundabouts and original entrance pillars, was designed in 1907 by John McLaren who designed Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The neighborhood is often referred to in a larger sense as the Shasta Hanchett neighborhood because Shasta Avenue is the main street that runs through it. But the historic name is Hanchett Residence Park and it is nestled between The Alameda and Park Avenue. Several of the Arts and Crafts homes in the neighborhood were once featured in American Bungalow Magazine.

Now, a grass roots group, calling itself the Hanchett Park Heritage Project, hopes to rebuild the historic gateway pillars with pergolas at key entrance points around the neighborhood, including Martin Avenue at The Alameda. They’re hosting their first home tour, featuring five historic houses, on May 30 to raise money for the project.

“Hanchett Park is one of only two residential parks in San Jose. The other is Palm Haven and no one has ever heard of us,” said Hillary Savage, a neighborhood resident who is helping plan the home tour. Residential parks were some of the first “subdivisions” at the turn of the last century that were planned with utility poles running at the back of the lots, decorative lighting and landscaping to “retain a park-like atmosphere.”

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the project and the neighborhood is Larry Camuso, who has restored his 1926 Italian Revival home into a stunning showplace and earned it a city historical designation. The house, which was originally built as a one-story home in 1908 then radically remodeled in 1926 with a second-story and Palladian windows, echoes the Hollywood glamour and style of its day.

And Camuso, with his partner Kirk Wentland, is getting it ready for the tour. Camuso, 49, is long a fan of the classic “Sunset Boulevard,” where the Hollywood mansion is a much a character as stars Gloria Swanson and William Holden.

“I discovered that movie in my 20s and thought that was what I was all about,” Camuso said. “That whole period of time, the style, design, art and decoration, it created a vision for me.” In fact, the look of the upstairs master suite, including the custom-made water spout in the bathroom, came right out of an Art Deco movie set book. Interior designer Paul Rokovich brought the vision to reality throughout the house.

“I’m stuck in the 1920s living in this house,” said Camuso, who is semi-retired from his antique and collector car parts business. (The house was built with a detached three-car garage, including a repair “pit” in one of the bays. “Sold!”)

Like many homeowners in the neighborhood, Camuso embarked on a historically-correct renovation. Though the house was in good condition when he bought it in 1991, he began five years later to restore its original footprint and fixtures. And he marshaled the memories of one of its original inhabitants, Lucretia Martin Schlueter, who was raised there until 1954.

“By way of old pictures that Lucretia supplied, I was able to put it back the way it was,” he said. Camuso threw an 80th birthday party for the house in 2006, and invited Lucretia, who is in her 90s and lives in Carmel, as the guest of honor.

“The house had great bones, but was never fully realized as far as its aesthetic values.” He removed a bathroom and closet off the main entry hall and returned the space to its original purpose — a rear hallway that separates the living room from the study. He also replaced the replacement windows — in other words, any flat glass that had been installed to fix broken windows over the years was replaced with vintage wavy glass that Camuso tracked down at Anderson C&M Used Building Material on Montgomery Street near downtown San Jose. He had nearly every one reglazed.

“It’s like a shimmering show of wavy glass,” he said.

Along with Camuso’s home, several turn-of-the-century Craftsman bungalows will be on the tour, including one with original stone columns in front. Also on the tour is one of the first homes built in the subdivision, considered the model home of its day. The large, shingled house was designed by the well-known Wilson-McKenzie architecture firm, which designed many homes in Naglee Park near downtown.

Outside the downtown core of Victorians, “this was considered modern, in terms of 1908,” Savage said.

Preparation for the home tour has been a neighborhood preoccupation over the past two years, as several homeowners have hosted cocktail and garden parties to raise money among themselves for the event.

The city of San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency is helping with funding to build the first set of pillars at The Alameda and Martin that were removed in the 1960s, probably because of disrepair. But residents want to rebuild the pillars at other key entry points as well, including at Park and Tillman avenues, with an estimated cost of $40,000 each.

“We have to have a lot of home tours,” Savage said.

Tickets for the Saturday, May 30th tour, may be purchased for $25 the day of the tour at 1265 Sierra Avenue, or $21 in advance through hanchettpark.org.

(Story by Julia Prodis Sulek. Photos by Desiree Northend.)

Update:

This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow: