Downtown Gilroy Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

Gilroy started here. The city's history page says the village began in 1850 as a stage and postal stop on Monterey Street, part of El Camino Real, was incorporated as the Town of Gilroy in 1868 and became a city by an act of the state legislature in March 1870. A rail line arrived in 1869. The same page describes the land around town going from grain, livestock, tobacco, vineyards and dairies to prune, cherry and apricot orchards, and then, from the early 1960s, to row crops such as tomatoes, sugar beets and garlic.

Three buildings from the early town are on the National Register of Historic Places. Old City Hall, at 7410 Monterey St on the corner of Sixth Street, dates to 1905 and was designed by Samuel Newsom in the Mission/Spanish Revival style; the city's history page describes its 1906 opening with the first public library, the jail, the courtroom and the police and fire departments inside. The Gilroy Free Library at 195 Fifth St, a Classical Revival building by William H. Weeks and Hiram J. Woods from 1909-10 at the corner of Fifth and Church streets, served as the library until 1975 and is now the Gilroy Museum. The Southern Pacific depot at 7250 Monterey St, whose National Register period of significance begins in 1918, stands near today's Caltrain station at 7150 Monterey St.

The core now follows the Downtown Gilroy Specific Plan, which the city approved in November 2005 as its guide for downtown development over about 20 years. The city's parcel records zone the center in the plan's districts: DHD on the Monterey Street storefront blocks from about Third Street to Eighth Street, with the CCA, TD, DED, CD and GD districts around it. The CD district east of the tracks holds a 2000s group of about 60 condominium parcels on Caroline, Gennaro, Fortunata and Railroad streets and Sarafina Way.