Cultivating Memories Willys And Betty Peck
June 11th, 2008, 7:38 pm Hobby Shops
If you want some insight into Willys and Betty Peck, just walk through their Saratoga home and garden.
A sign in the front yard identifies it as “The Heritage Gardens of Willys and Betty Peck.”
“Heritage” applies not just to the landscaping, including tall trees that have grown to shade the house and grounds after being planted by the Pecks. It also applies to almost everything there, including the California Craftsman house. Built in 1920, the home is listed in Saratoga’s Heritage Resource Directory.
The Pecks have lived in it throughout their 56-year marriage. Willys Peck paid $12,000 for it at a probate sale before their wedding.
The Pecks have transformed their more than 1-acre homestead into a unique space that reflects their array of interests - from railroading to gardening, from local history to showbiz and more.
Willys Peck, 84, is a retired attorney and journalist who grew up in Saratoga. He’s also a Saratoga history buff who writes a local column, “Saratoga Stereopticon,” for the Saratoga News, once owned by his father.
Betty Peck, 86, is a native San Franciscan, author and retired specialist in early childhood education. She founded and taught at the Easterbrook Farm School, a kindergarten demonstration school now called Los Gatos-Saratoga Observation Nursery School. During her teaching career, she also started the Saratoga Community Garden, a now-closed educational organic garden for schoolchildren.
The Pecks’ garden is featured in “Cultivating Sacred Space: Gardening for the Soul,” a 1997 book by Elizabeth Murray.
It’s also featured in Ikea’s new “America at Home” book, a collection of photos from across the nation.
Their house is crammed with books and artifacts. In the living room, an old-fashioned crank-up phonograph plays cylinder recordings. In what the Pecks call the great room - at the back of the house and several steps down - are a skeleton and a grand piano, as well as a movie projector from the defunct Saratoga Theater. In it is “King’s Row,” starring Ronald Reagan.
The Pecks present plays, concerts and other entertainment in the great room. It’s also where eighth-graders from Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos made costumes for a play they staged recently in the Pecks’ backyard amphitheater.
The budding thespians are students of the Pecks’ daughter, Anna Rainville, who, along with her two daughters and a dog, lives in a house behind the main house.
Called Theatre on the Ground, the amphitheater overlooks Saratoga Creek, which bisects the property. Its stage is a raised platform with an open railing built from tree branches in back. Seati ng in the back row is on straight-backed wooden benches that came from what Betty Peck calls “a rich man’s tennis court.”
In keeping with his interest in history and his journalistic background - he was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News - Willys Peck collects old printing presses. A still-working, treadle-operated job press from 1883 sits inside the house, along with antique type cases.
A separate building houses more presses and memorabilia for a printing history museum, opening June 22 to friends and guests only. It’s identified with a sign, “Peck the Printer.”
Another of Willys Peck’s hobbies is railroading. That’s readily apparent from the narrow-gauge tracks that circle the house. On the tracks behind the house sits a half-scale, gas-powered replica of an early steam locomotive, the C.P. Huntington. He spent two years building it, according to a story in the Saratoga News.
Hitched to the engine is a flatbed car that, like the tracks and ties, came from apricot orchards and drying yards in the Santa Clara Valley, once known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight because of its boundless acres of fruit and nut trees.
Peck also has replicated an old railroad station in a room behind his printing museum. Another building houses his book collection, which the Saratoga Historical Foundation is archiving.
In the front yard is an old streetcar shelter that has become a cozy retreat with colorful, plump pillows. It used to shelter people waiting for a Peninsular Railway streetcar to take them to Los Gatos. The Peninsular Railway was an interurban electrified line serving Santa Clara County during the early 20th century.
Tags: acre homestead, amp, cylinder recordings, demonstration school, early childhood education, elizabeth murray, gardenin, heritage gardens, heritage resource, history buff, Hobbies, living room, los gatos, marriage, movie projector, new america, organic garden, pecks, sacred space, saratoga community, saratoga news, several steps, stereopticon, tall trees, tennis, willysRelated posts
