Milpitas Grammar School

The Milpitas Grammar School was completed in 1915. It had o ices, at least four
classrooms, and an auditorium. It replaced an earlier two story Victorian styled
wooden schoolhouse that burned down in 1912. Behind the old school was a carriage
barn where students and teachers kept their buggies and horses while school was in
session. The barn and a storage building just to the south bothburneddownwiththe
school in 1912.

Classes were heldinthenewbuildinginto1954whenthecitywasincorporated.Fora
few years, it served asthecityhall.Italsowasthecitylibraryforatime.Eventually,
it became the senior center. In 1990, the school waslistedontheNationalRegisterof
Historic places. A new community library structure that incorporates the old school
began in 2006.

 Dr. Renselaer Smith Home

In 1904, Dr. Renselaer Smith moved to Milpitas. The house was built in 1915 by Dr.
Smith, Milpitas second doctor, to serve as his o ice and home. For many years, the
lot to the south of the main house was the location of a freshproducestandoperated
by Dr. Smiths son, Renselaer Smith, Jr.

In 1947, the DeVries family bought this elegantsixbedroomhouseatthenorthendof

Main Street. Dr. Smiths family moved to southern California. Their house is still
located across the street from the Milpitas Library.

 Maple Hall/Cracolice Building

Built prior to 1892 by the Paschote brothers, this is perhaps the oldest commercial
building on Main Street. Its interior walls are clearly shown on the 1893 Sanborn
Perris Company re insurance map. The large structure oncehadadancehallonthe
second floor named Maple Hall. Below were a saloon, general store, a veterinary
hospital and a barbershop.

In the 1920s, a young pharmacist, Sal Cracolice, came to Milpitas to take over
management of thelocalpharmacyownedbyaSanJosepharmacistlocatedunderthe
dance hall. Later, he purchased the business and later the building andforatimethe
local U.S. Post O ice was located in its north end. In the 1960s and 1970s Sal's son
operated a men's clothing store in the south end of the building. Sal Cracolice
promoted more growth of the town and came to be known as "Mr. Milpitas." The
Cracolice family livednorthofthepharmacyonMainStreet.Thesiteoftheirhomeis
now covered by the Calaveras Blvd. overpass. Mr. Cracolice diedin1999afterseeing
his dream of a bustling, metropolis-like Milpitas come true.

In the early 1960s the building was extensively modernized. The unused dance hall
was divided into small apartments and another addition was built on the north side.
The roof line was changed by adding parapets and the front facade was raised and
squared o . However, under certain lighting conditions, one may still discern an
outline in bas relief of the buildings gracefully gabled curvesortheplaquethatused
to read "Maple Hall". Unchanged, is the doorway and decorative tile work located on
the extreme southeast corner of the building's ground floor. There, it is just as it
looked in photographs taken before the First World War. Still owned by the
descendents of Sal Cracolice. The view to the left is no longer seen due to the
construction of dental o ices on the vacant lot.

 Winsor Blacksmith Shop

The last of many smithies that lined Main Street when it was known as the Oakland Highway, the
Winsor shop was opened in 1926. The Winsor brothers, Tom and George, who built their
establishment on this site were descendants of John Winsor, an Englishman whosettledinMilpitas
in the 1860s after a stay in Iowa.

TheWinsorshopcateredtothemanyranchers,farmersandorchardistsinthearea.Theagricultural
toolsmadebytheWinsorsmaystillbestoredinbarnsandshedsinthefoothills.TheWinsorsmade
the branding irons used by many area ranchers. Theironsweretestedbyheatingthemredhotand
burning the design into the south wall of the shop. When some partially rotted boards were
replaced onthesouthwallin1994,severalofthesehistoricbrandmarkswerethrownawayastrash.
When the structure was demolished, the remaining brands were salvaged, preserved, and mounted
for display near the parking garage entrance of the Milpitas Public Library.

It is tting that this blacksmith shop should have been the last survivor of its kind in Milpitas, for
John Winsor himself wasatruesurvivor.ThefollowingaccountistakenfromMilpitas:TheCentury
of Little Cornelds by Patricia Loomis.

Winsor almost didnt get to Milpitas. Coming overland in 1852, he became ill and was left beside
the wagon trail in Utah Territory to die. Nursed back to health by Indians, he spent the winter
trapping and then joined another California-bound train.

At the mines on the American River, Winsor metamannewlyarrivedfromhishometowninIowa

who told him his wife had learned of his death and remarried."
(An oral history from a Winsor descendent told thestorythatWinsorfoundgoldwhileprospecting.
He returned to his wife and her new husband in Iowa and gave them a bag of gold. Then he
retraced his journey back to California where he married, raised a family, and lived out his days.)

Winsorgaveupminingin1856andafterworkingawhileonafarmintheSanJoaquinValley,came
to Mission San Jose where he met and (in 1858) marriedanIrishgirlnamedCatherineCostello.For
about ve years the Winsors lived back in the hills in the Smith Creek area, thencametoMilpitas
and bought 40 acres on the Milpitas-Berryessa Road (now Capitol Avenue).

Today the blacksmithshopisgone. Itwasdestroyedin2006tomakeadrivewaytothenewlibrary

that was being built to the north. Thewatertankhouseusedattheblacksmithshopwaspreserved
and can be seen on the east side of Winsor Street near the library parking garage south entrance.


Spangler Brothers Service Station

The Spangler family came from the Azores(onesourceassertstheywereGerman)duringthe1880s
along with many otherPortugueseimmigrants.ThenameoftherstSpanglertocometoMilpitasis
notknowntous.By1926,theyeartheWinsorbrothersbuiltandopenedtheirblacksmithshopjusta
few hundred feet north, the Spangler ShellStationwasalreadyathrivingbusiness.Nextdoortothe
station, in the larger building seen today at the corner of Winsor and Carlo Streets, was the
Overland Motor Company dealership, also owned and operated by the Spanglers. In thephoto,that
building is the white roofed structure in the background at right.

Eventually, the service station came to be thought of as Anthony Spanglers while the dealership
owned by his brother and was later run by Alexander Rose, Sr. as "Rose's Shell Auto Parts &
Hardware." According to local legend, Spangler enlisted in the Army during WWI and went o to
war. His Army identication tags, AKA dog tags, are displayed at Anthony SpanglerElementary
School. Local legend has it that he left the business in the hands ofhisbrothertokeepupwhilehe
was overseas ghting in theGreatWar.Whenhereturnedfromthewar,hefounditinworseshape
than when he left according to old time residents.

Before the 1950s the water table in Milpitas was said by Milpitas rst mayor, Tom Evatt, to have
been about two feet deep. The water from local wells was often discolored and of questionable
potability due to the shallow depth of the wells, which may have contaminated the local
groundwater. Anthony Spangler was the leader of a group of local businessmen and residents who
wanted to bring a safe and reliable water system to Milpitas so that the town could support better
growth. It was through his e orts the rst Milpitas Water District was formed and the rst water
bonds were passed. However, Spanglers untimely death in 1949 kept him from ever seeing his
vision of a safe and reliable water system for downtown Milpitas come to pass. Today, the water
system used to bring safe and deliciously cool water to Milpitas is the descendent of that early
water district.

Spanglers Station, now Main Street Gas, still lls up automobile gastanksandlooksmuchasitdid
when Anthony Spangler returned home from the First World War. It is the oldest continually
operated commercial business on Main Street.


Ford Plant Great Mall Area

In 1952, Ford Motor Corporation decided to relocate its northern California assembly plant from
Richmond, where it had outgrown the available site, to Milpitas. At the time, Milpitas was
unincorporated county land to the northeast ofSanJos.However,theWesternPacicRailroadhad
bought up 1,600 acres of mostly west and northwest Milpitas after 1946tocreateanindustrialpark.
Much of the acreage was marshy wetlands. The railroad dugdrainageditches,connectedtopotable
water, and started building a sewer system so that Santa Clara County would issue permitsforthe
industrial park. The Ford company purchased about 160 acres from the Western Pacic Railroad.
Since the closest city totheplantwasSanJos,FordcalledtheirnewplanttheSanJoseFordMotor
Assembly Plant.

Our city formed as a defensive incorporation in 1954 to keep the Ford plant and the village from
being swallowed up by a growing San Jos. In 1960, an election was held to determine whether
young Milpitas would join with the expanding San Jos. The local activists in favor of remaining
independent of the larger city to thesouthsawthemselvesasghtingo abehemoth.Becausethey
thought of their campaign against incorporation into San Jos as the same kind of ght for
independence that our forefathers waged in the Revolutionary War against the British, they made
their symbol the minuteman and following their overwhelmingly lopsided victory in the election,
they made the image of the famous minuteman statue part of the o icial city seal.
In the early 1980s the Ford plant stopped operations. Gradually, machinery was removed from the
lines and moved to other facilities. In 1992, Ford determined to transform the defunct plant into a
modern enclosed shopping mall called The Great Mall of the Bay Area.