North Willow Glen & Gardner, San Jose Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

Two City maps use the name North Willow Glen for different places, so start with the map. The City's neighborhood map labels the blocks west of Lincoln Ave, from Minnesota Ave up to I-280, as North Willow Glen. The City's North Willow Glen Conservation Area is somewhere else: east of Bird Ave, between Willow St, Delmas Ave and the Caltrain tracks, inside the area the same neighborhood map calls Gardner. This guide covers both, plus the rest of Gardner out to Highway 87.

The area's story starts with the Roberto Adobe at 770 Lincoln Ave. Roberto Balermino built it around 1836 and was granted the 2,219-acre Rancho de los Coches in 1844. Antonio Suñol acquired the rancho in 1847 and built a brick house beside the adobe, which the National Park Service calls the first brick house completed in Alta California, and a second story and balcony were added in 1853. The site is California Historical Landmark No. 898, on the National Register since 1977 and a City Landmark. The Gardner name goes back to a school: a 1904 county history says the Gardner school in San Jose was named for George W. Gardner and credits him with establishing it.

The tracks along the conservation area's north edge, used today by Caltrain, cross Bird Ave on a grade separation that dates to 1935, when the Southern Pacific lifted its line over the streets after its fight with the short-lived City of Willow Glen; the original Bird Ave overpass was later replaced when the street was widened. The City's Historic Resources Inventory lists about 430 properties in the conservation area. About 70 percent of the dated records fall between 1900 and 1939, with the 1920s the largest single decade, and a smaller postwar layer follows from the 1940s and 1950s.