Skip to product information
1 of 27

Local Landmarks & Heritage

  • San José Municipal Rose Garden (America's Best Rose Garden, 2010)
  • Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Rosicrucian Park
  • Hoover Theater
  • Chapman & Davis Tract (1877)

Neighborhood History

Rose Garden is one of San José's oldest neighborhoods outside the eighteenth and nineteenth-century downtown core. Several Victorian houses along Magnolia Street, Hester Street, and Hedding Street date from the 1860s and 1870s, and one of the city's earliest planned subdivisions — the 1877 Chapman and Davis tract — lies at the neighborhood's heart, along the route of the San José and Santa Clara Railroad. That railroad, which opened with horsecars in 1868, was the first interurban railroad in California and the first interurban electric streetcar in the American West when it was electrified in 1888.

The neighborhood takes its name from the San José Municipal Rose Garden, a 5.5-acre park on what was formerly a prune orchard. The City of San José voted to set aside the land on November 20, 1927, the Santa Clara County Rose Society provided the roses, and the garden was officially dedicated on April 7, 1937. In 2010, the All-American Rose Selections named it America's Best Rose Garden in the first nationwide competition of its kind. Rosicrucian Park, home to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum — which holds the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in western North America — anchors the neighborhood's cultural identity alongside the rose garden. In 1937, John Crummey of the Food Machinery Corporation subdivided his adjacent 25-acre pear orchard into residential lots that formed the core of what became Rose Park, the neighborhood's defining residential precinct.

MY-NHD's Rose Garden tee is for those who know San José's oldest garden neighborhood — roses, Victorian architecture, and California's first electric streetcar all on the same historic streets.

MY-NHD

Rose Garden - San Jose - Unisex Cotton Tee

Rose Garden - San Jose - Unisex Cotton Tee

Regular price $29.95 CAD
Regular price Sale price $29.95 CAD
Sale Sold out

Rose Garden is named for the city’s Municipal Rose Garden, a 5.5-acre former prune orchard dedicated in 1937. Victorian houses on Magnolia, Hester and Hedding Streets date to the 1860s and 1870s, and Rosicrucian Park and its Egyptian Museum stand nearby.

View full details