The Rose Garden is one of San Jose’s oldest neighborhoods outside the old downtown. Victorian houses from the 1860s and 1870s stand on Magnolia, Hester and Hedding streets, and the 1877 Chapman & Davis tract lies along The Alameda, the old road that linked the pueblo with Mission Santa Clara. Wealthy families built mansions along The Alameda in the late 1800s.
In the 1920s much of the area was pear and prune orchard. In 1927 the city bought an 11-acre prune orchard and turned part of it into the Municipal Rose Garden, and in 1937 a 25-acre pear orchard was subdivided into the Rose Park homes. Many houses from those years borrow from English Cotswold, Norman and Tudor styles. The district also holds Rosicrucian Park and the Hoover Theater.