Mountain View's oldest surviving home, built 1867 by German immigrant Henry Rengstorff, where visitors have reported a woman's silhouette in an upstairs window and unexplained thumping on the stairs.
3070 North Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free docent-led tours; donations to the Friends of R House accepted.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restored Victorian house on level ground inside Shoreline at Mountain View park
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1867 · National Register of Historic Places (1978) · Oldest surviving home in Mountain View · Italianate Victorian architecture · Henry Rengstorff / Rengstorff Landing history · City of Mountain View-owned historic house museum
Henry Rengstorff arrived in California during the Gold Rush and established himself as one of the most successful landowners in the Santa Clara Valley. He built his home near Rengstorff Landing, an important grain-shipping hub on the western side of the valley, where schooners took on hay and grain bound for San Francisco Bay ports. The house, constructed around 1867, was designed to reflect his prosperity and to accommodate his family, which included six children. He added a dedicated room for his four daughters to meet with a dressmaker for fashion fittings — an unusual domestic detail that survives in the docent narrative.
Henry Rengstorff died in 1906. The family retained the property until 1959, when a grandson sold the surrounding ranch to the Newhall Development Company. After the sale, the house changed hands repeatedly. No owner remained long, with the disturbances occupants described concentrated on the second floor. The City of Mountain View acquired the house for one dollar in 1979 and moved it to Shoreline Park to save it from demolition. In 1986, the house was relocated again to its current address at 3070 North Shoreline Boulevard.
Restoration was completed and the house opened to the public as a history museum in 1991. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP reference 78000778, added June 13, 1978) and operates under the City's Community Services Department with support from the Friends of R House. The building's connection to the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping — one of the perpetrators reportedly wanted money to restore the family mansion — draws occasional media attention beyond its architectural significance.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of the Rengstorff House traces largely to the two decades between the family's departure in 1959 and the city's acquisition in 1979. During that period the house passed through multiple owners, none of whom stayed long. Former occupants described disturbances concentrated on the second floor: thumping on the staircase, the sound of a child crying, and a general unease specific to the upper rooms. The pattern was consistent enough that the property's turnover rate became part of its local reputation.
The most frequently reported phenomenon is a woman's silhouette visible in one of the upstairs windows. The figure appears to be looking outward, waiting. Accounts come from passersby on the street outside, not only from people inside the building. Who the figure might be is not established in any source — the Rengstorff family itself did not experience notable deaths on the property, and no historical incident within the house has been linked to the reports.
A professional paranormal investigator visited the house and documented his findings for the Los Altos News, which ran a feature on the investigation. The investigator noted the concentrated quality of the reported activity on the upper floor and the consistency of the silhouette accounts over many years. The city's restoration and its conversion to a public museum have not eliminated the reports — visitors and docents continue to note the upstairs window phenomenon, which the Friends of R House acknowledges as part of the building's layered history.
Notable Entities
Free guided tours of the restored 1867 Italianate Victorian house cover the life of German immigrant Henry Rengstorff, the history of his land holdings and the grain-shipping landing, and the long process of restoring and relocating the structure to its current site in Shoreline Park. Docents can tailor the 30-minute tour to your group's interests.
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