Her husband, John Fang, was a Shanghai-born, UC Berkeley-trained “newspaper man”, and the pair settled in San Francisco’s Chinatown and set about building a media empire, first in the Chinese-language press, and later with the English-language publications Asian Week and the Independent. Mrs Fang’s own journey to Hillsborough started in China, where she lived until her marriage and immigration to San Francisco in 1960. Photograph by Cayce Clifford, The Guardian Mrs Fang poses next to a window at her home in Hillsborough. “Before, driving by, I always wondered who lived here,” says Mrs Fang, echoing my own experience, and that of thousands of others. As one of the few landmarks along the way, it has captured the imagination of generations of travellers and commuters. The problems presented by poor modernist design are particularly acute in a town such as Hillsborough, where Modernism is not the predominant style.”īut the Flintstone house has long been a favorite among regular travelers along the highway connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley. “However, when this style is designed badly or executed poorly, the results can be dramatic and create impacts that ripple into the neighborhoods in which those buildings are placed. “Many kinds of homes have fallen under the architectural genus ‘Modernism’ and some of these are in Hillsborough,” reads the chapter on style. They read a bit like an extended critique of the Flintstone house. The ADRB now enforces the town’s 78-page residential design guidelines, which demand “total commitment” to a chosen architectural style. Photographs by Cayce Clifford, The Guardian

It was in response to the Nicholson’s construction of the Flintstone house in 1976 that the town first established its Architecture and Design Review Board (ADRB), according to former resident Tom Petika, who told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997 that the ADRB was established “so there would never be another home like that built in Hillsborough”.ĭetails inside the Flintstone house kitchen in Hillsborough, California. The enclave is known for its architecture, including a 98-room Beaux-Arts chateau called Carolands, which was built for the heiress of the Pullman railway car fortune the “ Western White House” designed by Julia Morgan for the eldest son of William Randolph Hearst and a Frank Lloyd Wright building that helped popularize the mid-century modern style in California.īut the tastemakers of Hillsborough have not extended their favor to the experimental stylings of William Nicholson, the architect who came up with the idea of creating a house by spraying gunite (dry concrete) over a structure molded from giant aeronautical balloons, wire mesh and rebar. The town of Hillsborough has always been at war with the Flintstone house.Īn exclusive community of about 11,000 residents that sits about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, Hillsborough ranked fifth in Bloomberg’s 2019 ranking of America’s richest places, with an average household income of more than $370,000 and a median home value of more than $4.3m. “Look at it! Look at it! Isn’t that cute?” she laughs. Within moments of welcoming me into her “conversation room”, she demonstrates the workings of a toy chicken that dances, shakes its rear end and then lays three (plastic) eggs. There are simply too many delightful surprises, from the lifesize Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys in the guest bedroom to the glass octopus on the wall in the foyer (“An octopus is always good company,” Mrs Fang points out). The dispute has casted a pall over Mrs Fang’s enjoyment of the property, though I can attest that it is physically impossible not to smile while there.

In March, the town of Hillsborough filed a lawsuit against Mrs Fang, alleging that she failed to obtain the proper permits for her landscaping work, declaring her home a “public nuisance”, and seeking a court order to remove the various “improvements” that have turned the home into what the town’s lawyer describes as a “highly visible eye sore” that is not “in keeping with community standards”. The retired San Francisco media magnate, in her mid-80s, has indulged every flight of fancy in landscaping and decorating a property that, thanks to its uniquely bulbous architecture, was already known locally as “the Flintstone house”.Īnd yet, somehow, not everyone is laughing.

Mrs Fang poses in the backyard of her home in Hillsborough.

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