FILE: Visitors stroll through the Filoli gardens in Woodside, Calif., in September 2020.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The staff at the Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside transforms the estate every November with the fervor of festivity. Filoli’s director of marketing Dani Hielscher shared that they string 3,600 strands of lights — stretching over 25 miles — throughout the halls and terraces, testing each of the 159,600 individual bulbs to make sure they do in fact glow.
Outside, the pièce de résistance is an illuminated 210-foot tunnel that’s essentially a light portal into the holiday dimension. Meanwhile, 24 living Christmas trees are placed inside the building, each with wrapped presents underneath and thousands of ornaments dangling from their branches.
In a normal year, it takes 30 people nearly two days to execute the Filoli holiday plan. But this year, there was a one-of-a-kind interruption.
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The Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside, Calif., hangs more than 7,000 ornaments for its annual holiday events.
Courtesy of Filoli Historic House and GardenAfter a few rounds of decorating, after some lights had already been installed outside and some of the interior was spruced up with holiday flair, the head of the historical museum learned that the estate was chosen as the location for a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of China.
It spurred a mad dash to clean up the space for a meeting with massive geopolitical stakes.
“We held a substantial amount back, but we did put up a few rooms and took a lot things offline,” Filoli’s CEO, Kara Newport, told SFGATE in a Zoom interview. “There was a few weeks’ notice and I can share that we don’t know the details — a lot of it is still behind the scenes. When APEC decided to narrow the scope to a 10-mile radius, we were on that list.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden and China President Xi Jinping walk in the gardens at the Filoli estate in Woodside, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference.
Doug Mills/APTheir visit was monumental. But as soon as the presidents and their plenipotentiaries departed, Filoli staff was waiting outside the premises to return to their holiday mission. By 6:20 p.m. on Nov. 15, the crew was allowed back on the property. They were in a time crunch: The official start to Holidays at Filoli was Nov. 17.
“From that point, we had 48 hours to finish installing,” Newport said. “Well, technically, it was 47 hours, since we had to open on schedule by Friday at 5:30 p.m.”
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The team worked until 11:30 p.m. on the first night to install the indoor trees and begin cleaning up after the executive takeover. Newport said there was glitter everywhere. Staff formed an assembly line to transport ornaments out of the basement and into the appropriate rooms.
It takes 30 people working over two days to decorate Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside, Calif.
Courtesy of Filoli Historic House and GardenOn the morning of Nov. 16, the San Francisco florist Nigella, which Filoli partners with each year, arrived to set up its decorative blooms. Along with Nigella came a cast of looky-loos who wanted a glimpse of where the monumental summit had occurred.
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“We’re trying to decorate and there are people everywhere,” Newport said. “We have to put a tree up!”
By nightfall, Filoli staff took a deliberate pause as champagne flutes made the rounds.
“Thursday night we had our staff party — which was planned,” Newport said. “The party must go on.” There was a bar, and food was catered by the on-site cafe. Staff exchanged gifts, did a celebratory walk through the light tunnel and then raised glasses to a champagne toast.
Bay Area photographer Gino de Grandis captures the interior of the Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside, Calif.
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The job was still unfinished as morning broke on Nov. 17, as storage bins needed to be stowed and more than 60 wreaths awaited placement around the property. Nevertheless, by 5:30 p.m, guests began trickling in to celebrate the holidays. Some visitors made a beeline for the official guest book to view where the newest ink had dried.
Kevin Wisney, Filoli’s director of museum collections, had the idea to ask the presidents to sign the historic guest book. Newport said he fished out the mansion’s original signature book and the two world leaders obliged, signing in their native languages.
As expected, their comments were heavily scrutinized online. A Japanese columnist mused that Xi used Chinese calligraphy, which is “something he very rarely does in China. Compared with a signature of his from 2015, last week’s is in a more broken font and considerably different.”
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Meanwhile, in a discussion on Nextdoor viewed by SFGATE, a few Peninsula residents were baffled by Biden’s handwriting and asked for help in deciphering the message. (For what it’s worth: The president wrote, “What a wonderful venue. Thanks for the hospitality. I look forward to visiting again.”)
“I think they’re pretty legible,” Newport said of the signatures. “And what we heard is that Xi doesn’t do this very often.”
Filoli CEO Kara Newport poses for a portrait at Filoli Historic House & Garden in June 2020, in Woodside, Calif.
Dai Sugano/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty ImagesFiloli had already established a handsome reputation across the Bay Area, but it entered a new realm of popularity following the summit. Newport said they’ve since had a rush of bookings, and the estate has become a symbol of sorts for the country overseas, continuing a legacy that started in the early 1980s when the soap opera “Dynasty” shot scenes on the premises.
“I heard that [Dynasty] was the first American television show broadcasted in China,” Newport said. “We are iconically America’s home.”
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The final layer of any proper christening is satire, which Filoli achieved a few days after the summit when the cold opening sequence for “SNL” featured Biden fielding questions from reporters in the mansion’s ballroom.
“For staff, that was a moment beyond a moment,” Newport said. “They actually painted the murals from the ballroom. We all looked at it in detail. It’s not computer generated.”
Filoli Historic House & Garden in Woodside, Calif.
Courtesy of Filoli Historic House and GardenHowever, SNL managed to mix up a few interior design details that Filoli staff easily detected.
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“They painted some things wrong,” Newport said. “The biggest thing was when they turned to reporters, there were two murals in the background. There’s no place in the ballroom that has two murals next to each other.”
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