History
The house and gardens were built in 1897 for Mrs. Cornelia A. Hill, one of the pioneers of Redlands. In 1905, John Alfred Kimberly, a co-founder of Kimberly-Clark paper company, purchased the home to escape the Wisconsin winters, giving the family name to the property. The family celebrated the holidays at the property with a 90-foot (27 m) Magnolia tree adorned with 6000 watts of light. The Kimberly family continued to live in the home until the death in 1979 of Mary Kimberly Shirk, the widowed daughter of John Alfred Kimberly.
Before her death, Mrs. Shirk challenged the city of Redlands to raise the funds to purchase the property around the home and turn it into a 39 acres (0.06 sq mi; 0.16 km2) botanical park. If the funds were raised, she promised to bequeath the mansion and its 6.25 acres (0.01 sq mi; 0.03 km2) estate to the city. The city raised the funds, and the surrounding grounds became known as Prospect Park. At her death, Mrs. Shirk left the home to "the people of Redlands" and used the proceeds from the sale of Prospect Park to establish the Kimberly-Shirk Association which continues to care for the home today.
Prior to the conversion to museum, the mansion served as one of the filming locations for the 1981 movie Hell Night, starring Linda Blair. In the film, underground tunnels were depicted, but the house and the estate have no such feature. Later, grounds served as the setting of Fleetwood Mac's Big Love video. Shots depicting the inside of the home were filmed on a sound stage.
Read more about this topic: Kimberly Crest
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)