St. James Park is a leafy two-block square north of downtown San Jose, ringed by Victorian houses, the old courthouse, and a clutch of historic churches. The park was laid out in 1848 by Chester Lyman, who borrowed the New England common as his model. The two halves are separated by First Street and dotted with monuments, including a statue of President William McKinley unveiled in 1903.
The park went through a long period of neglect but a recent restoration has cleaned it up. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, with its distinctive board-and-batten Gothic Revival exterior, sits on the southeast corner. The neighbourhood around the park has a concentration of late-nineteenth-century architecture that gives a flavour of what San Jose looked like before the postwar sprawl.