Russian River Zen House

Thank you for visiting the Zen House Facebook page!

History (as told by neighbors):
Zen House was built in the 1930s. Originally, the house was owned by a society lady from San Francisco. She and her family came up during the summers and she would sit on the porch and sip tea with white gloves on.

When she died, her family abandoned the property and it was eventually taken over by a man (a squatter, maybe) who turned the front garden area into a junk yard.

The junk yard man was eventually driven out by the neighbors and the property was abandoned again. Eventually it was purchased by a local lawyer who remodeled the house completely. He relocated the bathroom, enclosed the porch which became the two bedrooms, and reconfigured the living space in other ways.

When he retired he moved to Santa Fe and the house was sold to a family from the Sacramento area with two daughters. The daughters' names were Brooke and Emmeline, since the main house was called Emmeline House and the cottage on the property was Brooke Cottage. They also rented the house as a vacation getaway through a local management company.

The property was sold again in the Spring of 2006 and has been Zen House ever since. Not much has changed on the inside, but the outside gardens and grounds have since been dramatically transformed!