Kearney Mansion Museum

The Kearney Mansion is located seven miles west of downtown Fresno. It consists of two buildings, a main residence and an adjoining servants' quarters. The two buildings are designed in the French Renaissance style, simulated through the use of materials indigenous to the area and through the use of Victorian stock moldings, all built by workers employed by owner M. Theo. Kearney. Both buildings have a basic rectangular form with walls of two-foot-thick unstabilized adobe brick, covered with a thin coat of plaster for waterproofing. The basic adobe structures are capped by a sophisticated roof structure, strongly influenced by the Schwab residence in New York City, which itself was a copy of Chateau de Chenonceaux. The high roofs, dormer windows, ornate pinnacles at the intersection of the high roofs, the simple ridgemolding, and lofty chimneys create a picturesque skyline. Today the mansion, operated by the Fresno City and County Historic Society as a museum, exhibits 50 percent of the original furnishings, including wallpapers and art nouveau light fixtures. Historic replicas of carpets and other wallpapers have been used where original fabric has been lost. The servants' quarters houses the museum store.The Kearney Mansion is located in the 225-acre "Chateau Fresno Park" (now Kearney Park), begun by Kearney in 1892. Rudolph Ulrich, the noted American landscape architect from New York, laid out the design for this park and the boulevard leading to it. Over the next fourteen years, Kearney turned a flat, barren landscape into one of the most beautiful parks in the United States. At the turn of the century the park may have contained more species of trees, vines, shrubs and roses than any equal area in the United States. The San Francisco Chronicle called it the "most beautiful park on the West Coast." The eleven-mile boulevard leading from downtown Fresno to the park was lined with alternating eucalyptus and palms, interspersed with 18,000 white and pink oleanders.