Frederick and Bessie Kohl were central members of the “Smart Set” in San Francisco during the first years of the century. They entertained at their San Mateo estate and also at a summer home they had purchased from the Crockers in what is now Tahoe Pines called Idelwilde and on their yacht there.

The Kohls had their Burlingame red brick mansion designed by local architects Howard and White to resemble Somerset House, seat of the Duke of Surrey in England. The first floor was made for entertaining in its light filled dining room and in the Great Hall patterned after Arlington Hall in Essex, England– a perfect setting for Bessie’s singing. The mansion’s 63 rooms included, beside the public rooms and the bedrooms, a billiard room, organ and echo organ rooms; a china room, a scullery; cold room and store room; two steel-lined fireproof vaults; sewing, linen, cedar and brushing rooms; a wine cellar; a trunk room and a laundry. A chapel was built off the master bedroom on the second floor for Bessie, who was a Catholic.

Written by: Liz Dossa, Sister Marilyn Gouailhardou, RSM and Catherine Wilkinson