1882 Menlo Park Mansion, Now an Independent K-8 School
920 Peninsula Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private school grounds; not open to general public.
Access
Limited Access
Active school campus; not accessible without authorization
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1882 · Augustus Laver Architecture · Bonanza-Era San Francisco Wealth · Peninsula School Heritage
The Coleman Mansion sits on what is now the campus of Peninsula School in the Menlo Oaks neighborhood of Menlo Park, California. The property's origin is tied to Bonanza-era San Francisco wealth. An 1878 inheritance from the Comstock silver king William S. O'Brien made his sister Maria O'Brien Coleman one of the wealthier figures in the Bay Area. In 1880 she purchased 165 acres in Menlo Park and commissioned architect Augustus Laver to design a country mansion as a wedding gift for her son James Coleman and his bride Carmelita. The structure was completed in 1882.
James Coleman served as a San Mateo County assemblyman. The mansion's architecture reflects the Bonanza-era taste for ornament and scale. It is one of the few surviving Laver-designed residences in the region.
Carmelita Coleman never lived at the mansion. In 1885, while staying in a San Francisco hotel, a loaded revolver discharged in their hotel room and killed her. The death, recorded in the original Punch Magazine and Past Heritage research, is the source of the modern paranormal narrative associated with the property.
In 1929, Josephine Duveneck and a small group of parents — including Stanford faculty — purchased the Coleman Mansion to house Peninsula School, an independent progressive school founded in 1925. The school has occupied the building, which it calls the Big Building, ever since. The campus also preserves the surrounding Menlo Oaks landscape.
Sources
Carmelita Coleman never lived in the mansion built for her wedding. She died in 1885 in a San Francisco hotel room when a loaded revolver discharged. Local folklore in Menlo Oaks has connected her name to a recurring figure reportedly seen in the attic of the Big Building — a translucent green gown, observed from inside the building and from the street outside.
The figure is referenced in Menlo Oaks neighborhood history, in InMenlo coverage including a 2021 piece on the school folklore and a 2025 Halloween piece titled The Legend of the Green Lady, and in Past Heritage's published research on the Coleman family. Reports cluster around the mansion's upper floor and the dormer windows of the attic.
Peninsula School is an active progressive K-8 school. The folklore exists alongside, rather than as part of, the school's actual program. The campus is private property; visitors should restrict observation to the public sidewalks. The mansion's documented history as an architectural and family-tragedy site is independently established in published Menlo Park heritage writing.
Notable Entities
View the Coleman Mansion — known on campus as the Big Building — from the public right-of-way. The structure is an active independent school and a private property; do not enter the grounds without permission. The mansion was designed by architect Augustus Laver and completed in 1882.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
San Francisco, CA
Built 1894-1896 for paint and white-lead magnate William Franklin Whittier and designed by Edward Robinson Swain, the 30-room mansion is one of the few Pacific Heights mansions to survive the 1906 earthquake. It became San Francisco Landmark #75 in 1975 and was added to the National Register the following year.
Gilroy, CA
The Old Gilroy Hotel building sits at 7365 Monterey Road in downtown Gilroy, California. Historical-building documentation places the structure among the oldest commercial buildings remaining on Monterey Road, the original El Camino Real corridor through the south Santa Clara Valley. The hotel ceased operation in the 20th century; the building has since served various retail and commercial tenants.
San Francisco, CA
The Westerfeld House is an 1889 Stick-style Victorian at 1198 Fulton Street, built by German-born confectioner William Westerfeld. The 28-room mansion served as the Russian consulate in the 1920s, was occupied by underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beausoleil in 1966-67, and is a designated San Francisco Landmark and National Register property.