Agnews campus tower

Thanks to my location in the SF Bay Area, I’m able to visit many historic sites in Silicon Valley. One of the most curious is Sun’s old Santa Clara campus at 4150 Network Circle, AKA the old “Agnews Developmental Center” or Agnews Historic Park.

Agnews was orignally a psychiatric care asylum prior to its establishment as the Sun headquarters (until of course they acquired “Sun Quentin”, now the Meta campus at 1 Hacker Way). The history of the location as an asylum is rather dark; others do better justice to this story than I could.

After Oracle’s 2009 acquisition of Sun, they took control of this property. Today, they maintain their Santa Clara campus here and most of the facilities are secured and inaccessible to the general public. The park itself is very serene.

Agnews campus

It’s rumored that the original Sun Microsystems sign shown below in the interior courtyard is still there, however this is not visible from the public portions of the park.

courtyard (image courtesy Kai Seidler)

Where Sun’s entryway sign used to stand now says Oracle.

oracle sign