There’s great news on the horizon for downtown San Jose’s skyline. The iconic neon sign atop the Hotel De Anza is set to be restored and back to its full glowing glory later this month.
You might remember that the 10-story, art deco hotel on West Santa Clara Street was purchased last year by a new ownership group, MHP Hospitality, after being closed for several months because of internal flood damage. The hotel reopened earlier this year, and there’s even jazz back at the famed Hedley Club lounge a couple nights a week.
But the return of the rooftop sign should help remind people the De Anza is alive and well. Sean Curtis, the hotel’s chief operating officer, said Oakland-based Arrow Sign Company has been hired to restore the fading neon sign, which will also be re-painted so its red color pops during daylight hours, too.
The expectation is that all the work will be completed in time to re-light the sign on June 27, when the Preservation Action Council has an event at the hotel to celebrate its 35th anniversary. PAC-SJ Executive Director Ben Leech says the event is being tied to a fundraising campaign to support the sign’s full restoration — and to ensure that it wasn’t replaced with a cheaper LED option. More information about the “Legacy in Lights” gala, including tickets, are available at www.preservation.org.
“Every time I drive down Santa Clara and see that sign dark, it’s like a black hole in the skyline,” Leech said. “It was designed to glow, and once it’s glowing again, it’ll be a beacon for the city to celebrate the things that make it unique.”
The hotel was originally built by Carl Swenson in 1931 and, over the decades, hosted loads of celebrity guests (including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939) as well as being the original home of radio station KEEN. Like the rest of downtown San Jose, it fell on hard times in the 1970s. But it was saved from the wrecking ball and underwent a $10 million restoration in 1990 and another renovation in 2015.
Curtis says that after the sign is finished, plans are in the works to reopen the hotel’s restaurant — formerly La Pastaia — as well as “refresh” rooms, the Hedley Club and the Palm Court patio. The goal is to return the De Anza to being more of a regular gathering spot for downtown residents and workers, not just hotel guests.
“People forget this was a building that was abandoned for decades, given up for dead and seen as an eyesore. It took city investment and civic ambition to say this is something worth keeping around. Nobody would have said 35 years later, we’re glad we tore down the Hotel De Anza,” Leech said. “Today’s eyesore is tomorrow’s civic anchor. And the sign is the glowing crown on that.”
HISTORIC ODYSSEY: San Jose Unified School District closed its chapter on another year of its 172-year history last month, and it’s a legacy that’s now well-documented thanks to a 15-year project undertaken by historian and retired teacher Ed Hodges. He has completed a 500-page book, “The San Jose Public School System: A History, 1853 – 2024,” and created a poster-size “biography” of each of the 41 schools to display on campus.
Hodges was contacted by the district in 2009 to see if he could help them reassemble their history after a flood in the basement of the district office destroyed many original documents. With a good deal of help over the years, Hodges went through an amazing journey to discover opening dates for the district’s 27 elementary schools — plus 19 more that no longer exist — as well as stories about teachers, principals, lawsuits, integration, food programs and so much more.
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – March 04: Ed Hodges, center, a volunteer historian for the San Jose Unified School District, John Halseth, left, a former competitive cyclist in San Jose, and Terry Shaw, a bicycle historian, pose for a portrait at the Abraham Lincoln High School football field, in San Jose, Calif., on March 4, 2022. The football field is the site of the Burbank Velodrome, which operated from 1935 to 1941 and is now essentially beneath the bleachers. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Combing through newspaper archives were a key part of his research, Hodges told me, and occasionally he uncovered some interesting material that made it into this column — like the velodrome that was once under Lincoln High School and the quixotic search for a photo of Ann Darling, an assistant superintendent in the early 20th century.
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“I find it strangely satisfying “bringing back to life” these old stories and sharing my findings,” Hodges wrote in the introduction of the book, which — along with the posters — he produced at no charge to the district.
MEMORABLE TEACHER: I was sad to read about the passing of Bill Rasmussen, whose 40-year career in education included teaching English during the four years in the 1980s when I was at Santa Teresa High School in South San Jose. I never had Mr. Rasmussen for a class, but he had a larger-than-life personality that made him well-known around the campus.
He was one of a few teachers back in those days known for wearing Hawaiian shirts to school — it’s possible Rasmussen, math teacher Dennis McKenna and U.S. History teacher Bob LaMonte all shopped together — and the recommended attire for his celebration of life at 1 p.m. June 29 at Santa Teresa is following his style. “We encourage people to wear Hawaiian print attire or something blue, his favorite color,” the obituary read. “Please no black and socks are optional.”
CREATIVE CONNECTIONS: City Lights Theatre Company in downtown San Jose has its annual “Lights Up!” new-play festival and maker faire coming up June 14. There’ll be scripted readings of two plays, “The Soulmate Play,” by Anthony Doan and directed by Jacob Yoder-Schrock, at 1 p.m. and “Helicopter Typhoon Carabao! or To Survive an Apocalypse Now,” written by Amanda L. Andrei and directed by Mark Anderson Phillips, at 5 p.m.
The maker faire gets going at noon and will be open between the readings, too, with some familiar faces at City Lights contributing their non-theater creativity to the cause. City Lights Executive Artistic Director Lisa Mallette will have her coasters, photo cards and tea lights for sale; Marketing Director Rebecca Wallace will be marketing collage art and cards and you can find out if actor Keenan Flagg’s pottery is as solid as his performances.
There’ll even be farm-fresh eggs for sale, courtesy of San Jose’s animal sanctuary Rancho Roben Rescues. Just don’t bring them to the next City Lights show, OK?