The Ainsley House

The Ainsley House is a beautifully preserved English Tudor Revival home with largely original 1920s furnishings, the third and final residence of John Colpitts Ainsley and his wife Alcinda May Shelly, and a symbol of both his success in the fruit canning industry and the agricultural past of Santa Clara Valley. Born in 1860 in Stokesley, Yorkshire, England, Ainsley immigrated to Ohio in 1884, came to Campbell in 1886, earned money by working in orchards and selling fruit trees, and built a primitive cannery on his first ranch. In 1891 he successfully exported 1,000 cases of tinned fruit to England, and in 1892 he partnered with his brother Thomas, became an American citizen, bought land beside the railway, and built the J.C. Ainsley Packing Company into Campbell’s largest employer. The cannery provided a nurse, hot meals, daycare for workers’ children, and cottages for migrant workers, while production averaged 5,000 to 6,000 tons of fruit each year, most of it shipped to England. After earlier homes in Campbell, the Ainsleys moved into this new house in 1925 and furnished it with new contemporary pieces of the highest quality. J.C. Ainsley died in August 1937 at age 77, Alcinda died in February 1939, and the house then stood largely unoccupied for forty years, though family members used it at Christmas and for some social events while caretakers lived in the Carriage House apartment. The surrounding orchard was eventually sold for development, restoration began in the late 1970s, the house was given to the City of Campbell in 1989, and it was moved to Grant Street in 1990. Built in 1925 on the southwest corner of Ainsley’s 83-acre orchard at present-day Hamilton and Bascom Avenues, the 5,000-square-foot house with attic and basement was the largest home the Ainsleys owned and cost about $50,000 to build. Its Tudor Revival features include a stucco exterior with half-timbering, fluted chimneys with chimney pots, a cedar-shingle roof shaped to resemble English thatch, copper gutters, eyebrow windows, painted woodwork, and an arched door with a lion-head knocker and carvings of oak leaves and acorns. The Carriage House originally contained a three-car garage, tool room, laundry, and second-floor gardener’s apartment. Fully restored and carefully maintained, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and remains a reminder of the era when Santa Clara Valley was famed for fruit and Campbell was known as The Orchard City.

Campbell, California · United States