02/28/2026
ROUND BARNS AND UTOPIA (Part 2 of 3)
Like the Shaker round barn (shared on 12/14/25), here's another phenomenal story about another round barn built for a utopian community. Besides the exciting recent news concerning this former historic landmark, there are many interesting storylines about the past history of both the cherished 1899 Fountaingrove round barn and the prominent individual who had it built. Hopefully you'll agree that the further one reads into this story, the more and more fascinating it becomes. (For those that want a more brief synopsis of it all, check out the attached link of the CBS News video at the end of the next paragraph.) Before delving into this barn's rich history, we'll start with some good news and hope in the present day. Also, much more supplemental information is shared as captions for the photos. Enjoy the story of the Fountaingrove round barn!
A SYMBOL OF HOPE
Great news out of Santa Rosa, California! Thanks to architect Ken Moholt-Siebert, as you read this now, a replica of the famous Fountaingrove round barn is being rebuilt within a mile of its original location! After the 16-sided barn was destroyed in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, it looked as if all hope to rebuild it was gone when the original site—which overlooked the busy 101 Freeway at the northern edge of Santa Rosa—was redeveloped into apartment buildings. Not so, however! After rebuilding his family's home and other structures lost in the fire on their property a mile away, Moholt-Siebert turned his attention to a new project in 2023—building a round barn! The new replica Fountaingrove round barn will also be visible to travelers of the 101, a mile north of the original location. Moholt-Siebert's plans will closely follow those recorded in the National Register of Historic Places. To label Moholt-Siebert's barn as a symbol of hope for the community of Santa Rosa is not an overstatement, evidenced by comments that poured in after San Francisco's KPIX CBS News aired the story on December 29, 2025—comments praising Moholt-Siebert as a hero for raising this sentinel landmark back up out of the ashes, which, as an added benefit, will keep its rich history alive and relevant. Here's a link to the news footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtEIS9N-eHQ
*PLEASE NOTE: The round barn is on private property just south of Cardinal Newman High School. Ken Moholt-Siebert requests that curious tourists enjoy the view of the barn from the public roads—the 101 or the Old Redwood Highway. Please respect the owner's wishes and do not drive or walk up the property's private road.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE MAN BEHIND THE BARN
A Japanese man named Kanaye Nagasawa—the first Japanese immigrant to permanently reside in the United States— commissioned the construction of the Fountaingrove round in 1899 to become part of the first utopian community in the state of California. Nagasawa was born into a samurai family in the Satsuma Domain within the Satsuma Province (modern-day Kagoshima) of Japan in 1852—a time when major changes were taking place in the country. Japan was isolated from most of the world at that time. Some Japanese citizens wanted Japan to remain in isolationism, while others, like the Satsuma Domain, desired the opening and westernization of Japan. Just a year before tensions came to a boiling point in the Japanese Civil War, Nagasawa was one of 19 Japanese students smuggled out of Japan in 1865—aided by a prominent Scottish businessman named Thomas Blake Glover—on a mission to study western technology and culture in Great Britain and Scotland. Many of these students went on to become prominent players in Japan's new government under Emperor Meiji and/or establishing Western-influenced industries when they returned to Japan (see the supplemental "Satsuma Students" in one of the photo captions). Kanaye Nagasawa, being the youngest of the students (13 years old in 1865), couldn't attend a university, so he was sent to Scotland and lived wit the Glover family while attending school there.
While in Scotland, he met another high-profile individual named Laurence Oliphant, a British diplomat and author. Oliphant was a disciple of Thomas Lake Harris, an Englishman and self-proclaimed prophet who had amassed followers from England and Scotland before establishing a utopian community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, in the United States. Oliphant recruited Nagasawa and several other Satsuma students and took them to Harris's commune in western New York State. Harris established a profitable winemaking industry in Brocton, New York. Nagasawa was the only one of the Japanese students to stay in the United States and, in 1875, he followed Harris to Santa Rosa, California where Harris established another 600-acre vineyard and utopian community in California. Harris took Nagasawa under his wing and groomed him in the business of winemaking. In 1892, Kenaye Nagasawa inherited Fountain Grove when Thomas Lake Harris, under pressure from the Santa Rosa community, made a hasty departure after getting caught up in some scandalous behavior of his own making.
THE ROUND BARN
With Harris gone, Nagasawa put into practice all he had learned and the Fountaingrove vineyard business flourished. In 1898, Nagasawa ordered the construction of a 72-foot-diameter, 16-sided barn to house the vineyard's workhorses. When completed in 1899, the Fountaingrove round barn had 28 stalls on the lower level and a spacious hayloft above, along with a partial basement below. In its heyday, the vineyard expanded to 2000 acres and it became California's leader in the wine industry. It was, in fact, the first California winery to market overseas to Europe, Great Britain, and Japan, earning Nagasawa the title of the "Wine King of California." He entertained many prominent figures at his estate, including Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and many Japanese dignitaries as well. Nagasawa was chosen as an overseer of the Japanese Exhibit at the 1915 World's Fair in San Francisco, after which he was awarded the highly-esteemed Order of the Rising Sun medal at the request of the emperor of Japan.
DARK DAYS
Kenaye Nagasawa never married and never had children. When he died in 1934, Nagasawa willed that the estate be passed down to his grand-nephew, who was an American citizen. However, in a sad turn of events, the intended recipient was not yet of age to take over the property, so the estate's trustee sold the land right out from under the would-be heirs. A battle for rightful ownership ensued in court for years, but all hope was lost during World War II. In 1942, president Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that stripped over 120,000 alien Japanese residents and Japanese American citizens of their land and incarcerated them until the end of the war. Incidentally, Kagoshima—Nagasawa's birth city,—was heavily bombed in June, 1945, two months before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. To right he wrongs of Roosevelt's administration, in 1990, president George Bush sent letters of apologies and $20,000 to each of the 82,219 surviving, racially-prejudiced Japanese Americans that were incarcerated during World War II, writing, "We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II."
HONORING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
Despite the destruction and devastation of the 2017 Tubbs Fire, there are still plenty of reminders of the utopian community and industry-leading winery that once existed and thrived in Santa Rosa, California. There are street names like Fountaingrove Parkway, Round Barn Boulevard, and Thomas Lake Harris Drive; there's the 33-acre Nagasawa Community Park—located on the same land that was once part of the 2,000-acre Fountaingrove vineyard; and, coming soon—thanks to an architect with a dream—a symbol of hope and restoration for a community that lost so much, in the form of a brand new round barn.
