1897 French Chateau and the Woman in the Top-Floor Window
1325 Prospect Dr, Redlands, CA 92373
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
House tours: Adults $15, Seniors/Veterans/Military/Students $12, Children 9+ $8. Garden tours: $4. Garden-only visits free Mon–Fri and Sunday 10am–4pm.
Access
Limited Access
Sloped hillside grounds; interior has multiple floors and staircases — not fully wheelchair accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · National Register of Historic Places · Kimberly-Clark Corporate History · Redlands Architectural Heritage
The three-story limestone-and-shingle residence at 1325 Prospect Drive commands a hillside overlooking Redlands, its French chateau silhouette — tall hipped roofs, dormer windows, wrap-around porch — visible from the valley below. The house was completed in 1897 for Cornelia A. Hill, a wealthy widow from New York who wanted a California winter retreat, and was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm of Dennis and Farwell.
John Alfred Kimberly purchased the property in December 1905. Kimberly, then in his later years, had co-founded the Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Wisconsin in 1872 — the company that would eventually produce Kleenex and Huggies — and the estate served as the family's winter residence for decades. When both John Alfred and his wife passed away, their youngest daughter Mary Kimberly Shirk inherited the home.
Mary Shirk's life at Kimberly Crest was among the longest residential tenures in the property's history. A philanthropist and community figure, she lived in the house until shortly before her death in 1979 at age 99. In keeping with her wishes, the estate — house, gardens, and furnishings — was bequeathed to the people of Redlands and is now managed by the Kimberly Crest House and Gardens Foundation as a museum and event venue.
The furnishings throughout the house remain largely as the Kimberly family left them, and the formal gardens, maintained in an Italianate style with a reflecting pond and citrus groves, are open to visitors.
Sources
The figure appears in the top-floor window after the mansion has closed. She is seated — some accounts specify a rocking chair — and visible from the grounds below. She does not move beyond the motion of rocking. She does not acknowledge observers.
Local accounts attribute her identity to Mary Kimberly Shirk, the last private resident of the house, who lived there until she was 99 years old. The attachment is biographical rather than tragic: a woman who spent most of a century in one place, whose possessions remain in the rooms around her, whose name is still on the foundation that manages the estate. If residual impressions attach to places of long habitation and strong emotional investment, Kimberly Crest fits that model.
The mansion's top floor is included on the docent-guided house tour, giving daytime visitors a chance to see the room from the inside — a perspective that reframes the after-hours window sightings in a new context. The window's position, elevation, and the quality of light inside the upper rooms at dusk have not been ruled out as contributing factors in the window apparition reports.
Notable Entities
Forty-five-minute docent-guided tours of the 7,000-square-foot French chateau-style mansion depart Thursday, Friday, and Sunday between 1pm and 4pm. The tour covers the furnished period interiors, the Kimberly family history, and the estate's architectural provenance. The top-floor room associated with apparition sightings is included on the route.
The estate's gardens are open for self-guided exploration Monday through Friday and Sunday from 10am to 4pm. The grounds offer views of the mansion exterior, including the top-floor window associated with reported after-hours sightings of a seated figure.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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