Silicon Valley Xanadu

 

OWNER: Robert Fenwick, cofounder and chairman of BR Communications, a manufacturer of military and diplomatic communications equipment

SITE: 47 acres in Los Altos Hills, Calif., overlooking Silicon Valley

UNUSUAL FEATURES: Two-hundred-foot glass exterior wall; indoor-outdoor tropical garden; billiards room; audiovisual room; spa; views of San Francisco Bay and the coastal mountains

ARCHITECT: Goodwin B. Steinberg, The Steinberg Group

COST: $2.5 million

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree,

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan")

When Bob Fenwick was growing up a farm boy on the edge of Appalachia, few would have predicted he'd end up in Los Altos Hills, home to such pioneers of the electronics industry as David Packard (Hewlett-Packard) and Jim Treybig (Tandem Computers).

Even back then, however, young Bob Fenwick dreamed of success in architectural terms. "I remember in high school hearing about people who had a house big enough to have a billiards room," he says. "I always admired people like that." It wasn't the sport he was fascinated by -- that's always been just a mild interest. It was the idea of it, having the luxury of all that room.

Now, Fenwick has nearly as much room in the seemingly measureless caverns of his basement than most people have in their entire house -- 3,000 square feet. And if you don't find this West Coast Kubla Khan in the billiards room or the health spa or the audiovisual center, then he's probably outside at the swimming pool or on the tennis court, or taking in the views of the often sunless seas of San Francisco Bay, some five miles to the northeast.

There is nothing very tropical about the cool ridge on which Fenwick chose to build his Xanadu, but he saw no reason why he should be denied all tropical pleasures. The 600-gallon saltwater tank in the rec room is home to a dozen species of fish, while at the center of the house is an indoor-outdoor garden of tropical plants kept moist by a sprinkler system and warmed by underground rivers.

In this stately pleasure dome, good things seem to come in pairs. For the master suite, Fenwick and his wife, Janet, decreed two baths, two toilets, two dressing areas, two dens, and two walk-in closets. And in their world-class kitchen, barbecues, dishwashers, even trash compactors double up, and refrigerators travel in threes.

What drives somebody to build on such a grand scale? Bob Fenwick's answer is not unlike that of the mountain climber asked why he scales the highest peaks. "Since such a house didn't exist," he says, "I had to build it."