In a prolific career spanning five decades, he designed more than 450 commercial and residential buildings in Palo Alto and on the Stanford campus. Clark was an exponent of the Spanish Colonial Revival design, which he called "Early California ". This style was characterized by thick stucco walls, red tile roofs, arches and arcades.
He is called "The Architect of Palo Alto," and Palo Alto is called "The City That Birge Built". Between 1922 and 1930, Clark was the only architect with an office in Palo Alto. His timing was uncanny because the town was just starting to grow. Among the buildings he designed were the Palo Alto downtown post office; most of the buildings on Ramona on the historic block south of University Avenue; the Lucie Stern Community Center; the old Palo Alto fire and police department (now Avenidas); and the home of Charles and Kathleen Norris (formerly the Stanford Newman Center).
But his first attempt in the business came in 1919 when he and his father, an art professor, designed the Lou Henry Hoover home on Stanford campus ( it now houses each Stanford president).
Clark taught at Stanford from 1950 to 1972. More than 30 of his homes are on the city's inventory of historic buildings and three are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Coxhead was an important and innovative designer whose contributions to that woodsy regional design known as Bay Area Traditional have only recently begun to be assessed and appreciated. He designed many homes using the technique that would become his identifying mark: English cottage style buildings without stylistic ornament.
The Coxhead style advanced the notions of simplicity in construction and use of natural materials. Many of his homes were covered in shingles which were left unpainted and allowed to weather. Others, such as the Williams House, were finished in terra cotta. Many of the homes in the San Francisco area were (and are) painted in pastel colors: The weathered shingle siding was a radical departure from that style. The wood paneling found throughout the Williams house is characteristic of a Coxhead design. The exterior, with its low dipping roof, is reminiscent of European and Japanese thatched roofs.
Another local Coxhead home can be found in San Mateo at 37 East Santa Inez Avenue. Now operated as a Bread & Breakfast Inn, the home was actually occupied by Coxhead from 1891 to 1924.
Numerous churches were created by Coxhead, many in the San Francisco Bay area. Most of these were commissioned and built prior to 1895, for after that time, Coxhead concentrated on residential designs. Two accessible examples are the Church of the Holy Innocents at 455 Fair Oaks in San Francisco and the Foothills Congregational Church at 461 Orange Avenue in Los Altos. Another Coxhead religious design is not a church: It is the Prayer Book Cross in Golden Gate Park.
Other Coxhead buildings include Cedar Gables Inn in Napa County, the 1908 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building (San Francisco), a public library at 1801 Green Street (San Francisco), and Peter's Episcopal Church in Red Bluff.
Ernest Coxhead died in Berkeley in 1933. A collection of his work can be found in the Environmental Design Archives at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.
Stone maintained an office in Palo Alto for a time, and designed several civic buildings here, including the Main and Mitchell Park Libraries, City Hall, and the Stanford Hospital. The 1970 city hall, shown at left, subsequently had the collonnade removed. Also shown are the main Palo Alto Library (the photo was taken while landscaping was still in progress) and Stanford Hospital.
The Stone style is often marked by the use of large multi-functional central spaces ringed by smaller enclosed rooms. He tended to use a profusion of decorative details. His works include New York's Museum of Modern Art, The Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall and the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India.
The Hanna House is considered one of the "Usonian" houses. These types of houses (the name has never been fully explained), were modestly priced homes, asymmetrical in design, L-shaped in plan, with only one story. However, the Hanna House ended up being larger, more complex and expensive than most Usonian homes.
The final product was a glass-fronted collection of hexagons with a brick chimney at its core. The structure's honeycomb shapes are mimicked in many of the home's details - from the flooring to the bathroom tiles. Its thin redwood walls were designed to add to the adaptability of the space. In the kitchen, for instance, these walls can open like louvers onto an expansive living room.
The house is planned on a thirty-sixty-degree angle grid, the floor patterned with a module of hexagons - thus giving rise to the name "Honeycomb House". All the walls are ordered on this grid, the typical corner a 120-degree angle. There are no right angles in the entire home. The home that the Hannas thought would cost them $15,000 ended up costing $37,000 - a daunting sum in Depression-era dollars.
In her 47-year career she designed and built more than 700 structures, ranging in styles from Arts and Crafts to Mediterranean and sizes from modest cottages to elegant mansions. Many are located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Two opposing forces determined Morgan's approach to architecture. One was the stately classicism she learned in Paris, the other was the environment of her native California. She applied both principles to one of the most famous buildings she designed: William Randolph Hearst's castle at San Simeon, California. Morgan worked on the castle for 30 years. Between 1913 and 1928 she also designed the Asilomar Center in Pacific Grove, one of many YWCA facilities she designed.
Morgan's primary attention was directed to her client's wishes. Reluctant to push beyond what her clients wanted, she had a tendency to put the practical ahead of the spatial.
Julia Morgan is not as well known as she should be. Partly, this is by design. She steadfastly refused to enter competitions or write articles. Yet her interest in crafts and ornamentation, her preoccupation with light and color, seems progressive today.
Julia Morgan structures in the area
MacArthur Park Restaurant, 27 University, Palo Alto (now a California Historical Landmark): This building was built during WWI as a recreation center for troops from Camp Fremont in Menlo Park. It was moved from Menlo Park to its current site. Residences include
Eichler was a builder and developer, rather than an architect, but his homes changed the California style of living. The designs he commissioned featured open floor plans, with kitchen, dining and living areas contiguous and connected without walls. Simple, smooth lines flow throughout the house, creating a calm, cool and modern atmosphere. The Eichler kitchen was designed as a place for the family to gather as well as eat.
Exposed architecture, where beams and support systems become part of the interior design is an Eichler hallmark. The ceiling, which consists of large, evenly spaced beams covered by flat roof decking, extends a few feet beyond the house walls. Beams and decking provide shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.
One of the most appealing aspects of Eichler homes is the sense of airiness and openness. Floor-to-ceiling windows present a view of spacious back yards and many of the homes contain an atrium. This enclosed patio in the middle of the structure serves as a protected location for tropical or exotic plants and small ponds. "Bringing the outside in" is a realizable goal in this case.
Eichler was something of a social visionary, fostering the idea that private residences should be in planned communities clustered with parks, community centers, and other amenities, such as the Eichler Club on Louis Road in Palo Alto. The Greenmeadow neighborhood off Alma Street by Adobe Creek was said to have been one of his favorite tracts because of its central recreation complex and private park maintained by the residents.
Eichler rejected the notion that minority owners reduced property values, a radical notion for the time, and was the first local builder to welcome selling homes to people of any race, creed or color. In 1958, when the Associated Home Builders refused to support his policy of non-discrimination, he resigned from that trade group.
Pedro de Lemos was both artist and architect. Many of his prints depict structures as important elements of the overall composition. Perhaps his best known local creations (with Gardner Daily) are the Allied Arts Guild buildings in Menlo Park. De Lemos was closely associated with this organization, of which he was cofounder and president. He is known for his Spanish Colonial Revival buildings, many of which were sited on the San Francisco Peninsula. Many of his designs employed colored decorative concrete, including concrete tiles. Casual viewers often mistake de Lemos' concrete work for stone or ceramic tile. De Lemos served as Curator of the Stanford Museum and was a founder of the Carmel Art Institute.
The two-story stucco gateway to Waverley Oaks (left) is the entrance to the former de Lemos home at 100 Waverley Oaks Court in Palo Alto. "Hacienda de Lemos", completed in the 1930s, is a California Arts-and-Crafts/Spanish Electic styled home that recalls the de Lemos family castle in Spain. De Lemos himself designed and fabricated many of the colorful and whimsical tiles that decorate the interior and exterior of the house. The building was restored in 1991. Other de Lemos structures include the three-story de Lemos building at 533 Ramona and 520 Ramona Street in Palo Alto, and buildings at the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park. There are also three de Lemos cottages (constructed in 1938) at 2301 - 2311 Hannover Street in the College Terrace section of Palo Alto.
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last updated: October 2, 2003 Original content: Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Museum of American Heritage Trademarks are the property of their owners |
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