If you have driven Highway 101 on the Peninsula for any length of time, you probably remember the sign. For about 60 years a big Ampex sign stood beside the freeway in Redwood City, and then one August it was gone. We have written about Redwood City before, about its courthouse, its climate slogan and its downtown. We never told the stories that make it a more interesting place than the postcard suggests. Here are some of them, including one that starts right here in San Carlos.
📼 The Sign Beside Highway 101
The Ampex sign marked the headquarters of the company that pioneered the videotape recorder in the late 1950s. Before that machine existed, television had to be done live or on film. Soon afterward, nearly everything on TV was recorded on tape, except sports, the news and live events. The original machine, the VR-1000, was about the size of an industrial kitchen range, and it ran tape two inches wide. Ampex won an Oscar, several Emmys and a Grammy for its work, and over the years the tape recorders shrank until reel-to-reel gave way to cassettes. By the early 1980s, it seemed like everybody had a VCR at home.
Ampex also left a trail of famous alumni, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Atari’s Nolan Bushnell and sound pioneer Ray Dolby. A former Ampex executive told NBC Bay Area that if you look at the family trees of Silicon Valley’s media and technology companies, about 50 major companies trace back to Ampex.
The company declared bankruptcy in 2008, was acquired by Delta Information Systems and moved to Hayward. When the Redwood City campus was sold, the contract included a provision that the sign had to stay. The property changed hands a couple of times, serving as the headquarters of Excite At Home in the early 2000s, and it eventually became part of Stanford’s Redwood City campus. When the city was reviewing Stanford’s plans for the area along Broadway, it considered the sign and decided it was not worthy of historic preservation. In August 2018, crews pulled the white “Ampex” letters off the sign and then took down the rest. Stanford said it asked historical societies and Ampex itself whether anyone wanted the letters, and nobody could take them, partly because of their size, so they went into storage. The university’s Special Collections holds documents, photographs and artifacts from the company for researchers.
So the sign is gone from the freeway, but the story is not. And here is the part many people do not know.
🏠 Ampex Was Born in San Carlos
Alexander M. Poniatoff, a Russian-American inventor, founded the company in San Carlos in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The name came from his initials plus “ex,” which also avoided a clash with a company already using AMP. During World War II it was a subcontractor to Dalmo-Victor, building electric motors and generators for radar, and it started out in an abandoned loft above the Dalmo-Victor plant. The company eventually had offices at 1313 Laurel Street in San Carlos, at the corner of Howard Avenue.
Its big break came from a German machine. After the war, an American Army officer brought home two German Magnetophon tape recorders and reels of tape, and Ampex developed its reel-to-reel recorders from that design at the urging of Bing Crosby, who wanted to pre-record his radio shows instead of performing them live. In the early 1950s Ampex moved to Redwood City. So the next time you are walking Laurel Street, you are on the street where a company that changed television and music began. Our post on Laurel Street summer evenings is a good companion for that walk.
🌼 The Chrysanthemum Center of the World
This is the story we like best, because it is about flowers. In 1907, the Japanese immigrant brothers Eikichi and Sadakusi Enomoto grew what may have been the first commercially grown chrysanthemums in the United States, in Redwood City. In 1926 the chamber of commerce declared Redwood City the “Chrysanthemum Center of the World.” The wartime internment of Japanese Americans and other factors ended flower growing as a major local industry, but the history stayed behind. Every fall, when the mums come into the shop, we think about it. If you want to know more about the flower itself, we have a shared guide to mums and chrysanthemums.
🌲 Why It Is Called Redwood City
The name is literal. In 1850, two men began the first lumber operation here, using the waterways of Redwood Creek to float coast redwoods from Woodside to San Francisco, and the settlement grew up around that trade. Before that, the land was part of the Rancho de las Pulgas, granted to the Argüello family in 1835. A family lawyer, Simon M. Mezes, bought the part that became Redwood City and sold land to people who were already squatting along the creek, and the settlement was called Mezesville. The name did not stick, but Mezes Park still exists on land Mezes gave for open space. Redwood City incorporated in 1867, the first city in San Mateo County to do so, and it has been the county seat since the county was formed in 1856.
⚓ The Port, and the First Ship
The Port of Redwood City sits at the mouth of a natural deepwater channel discovered in 1850, and it is the only deepwater port on San Francisco Bay south of San Francisco. It is also considered the birthplace of shipbuilding on the West Coast. The first schooner built there, in 1851, was named, appropriately, the Redwood. Shipbuilding thrived until the 1880s, and the last wooden ship built in the city, the Perseverance, was launched in 1883. A revival later brought the SS Faith, the first concrete ship in America. Until at least the 1880s the port itself was called El Embarcadero.
🏛️ The Courthouse That Changes Color
The old San Mateo County Courthouse in downtown Redwood City was built in 1910. In the late 1930s an addition was built in front of it that hid the original building from view. As part of the downtown revival, that addition was torn down and replaced with a large courtyard flanked by fountains, leading to the main steps. The courthouse’s glass dome is lit at night, and it changes colors every 11 seconds. The San Mateo County History Museum opened inside the courthouse in February 1999. Our Courthouse Square post and our look at the city’s climate slogan and downtown revival cover the square in detail.
🛣️ The Road Quirk That Puts Redwood Shores Next to Us
Here is a fun geography fact. Redwood Shores, the planned community on the bay side of Highway 101, is part of Redwood City. But you cannot drive from Redwood Shores to the rest of Redwood City without passing through San Carlos, or through Belmont. For a San Carlos florist that is very convenient. Redwood Shores is part of our regular delivery area, and it is practically next door.
💻 Silicon Valley, Right in the Middle
Redwood City had 84,292 residents at the 2020 census. It is the county seat in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it is home to global technology companies including Oracle, Electronic Arts, Evernote, Box and Informatica. The city is bigger than people expect, and 44 percent of its area is water. All that is the reason so many of our Redwood City orders go to offices, and why an arrangement on a desk is such a good thank-you in a city of workplaces.
💐 Sending Flowers to Redwood City
If you want to send something to a friend or colleague in Redwood City, our Redwood City delivery page covers the neighborhoods, from Downtown and Stambaugh Heller to Woodside Plaza, Redwood Shores and the hills, with answers to the common questions. Please give us the full address, the suite or unit number, and a phone number for the recipient. We deliver seven days a week.
📋 The Short Version
- The Ampex sign stood beside Highway 101 for about 60 years and came down in August 2018.
- Ampex was founded in San Carlos in 1944 and moved to Redwood City in the early 1950s.
- Redwood City grew chrysanthemums commercially from 1907 and was called the Chrysanthemum Center of the World in 1926.
- The city is named for redwoods floated down Redwood Creek from 1850.
- The courthouse dome changes color every 11 seconds, and Redwood Shores can only be reached by road through San Carlos or Belmont.