Murals and street art in Palo Alto

Palo Alto is not a graffiti town and it has no single mural district. What it has instead is a scattered set of commissioned walls, many of them small, some of them meant to be missed. A boy fishing out of a window that is not a window. A garbage man with an alien in his can. A native shrub blooming up an alley wall. Most are within a few blocks of University Avenue or California Avenue, which makes a mural hunt an easy hour on foot.

This page goes wall by wall. Our public art guide covers the city program as a whole, the Arnautoff frescoes and the land art at the Baylands. Here we focus on paint and mosaic: who made each piece, where to stand and which ones are temporary. Addresses come from the City of Palo Alto's Public Art Program, its collection map and its murals on view page as of October 2026.

Greg Brown's Pedestrian Series

In 1975 the city hired a young local painter, Greg Brown, as its artist in residence with money from a federal CETA jobs grant. Brown had moved to Palo Alto at age two and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1969. The local history site PaloAltoHistory.org says his first Palo Alto mural was at the Mitchell Park skating rink. He then started what he called the Pedestrian Series: trompe l'oeil scenes aimed at people on foot, who would stumble on them while running errands. The city says the series was complete by 1976 with nine murals.

The figures were his family, friends and neighbors, dropped into impossible situations. Brown kept coming back to touch them up until his death in 2014, often letting children add a brushstroke. The city has since hired fine art conservators to restore the survivors.

The murals you can still see

The city lists a fifth survivor, Sister Amelia, Patron Saint of Flight, without an address. The Inspector (the first mural in the series) and Roof Hoppers were lost to construction in 1995, then recreated at new sites after residents offered their walls. Woman Walking Pelican is gone. Burt the Alien was "laid to rest" in 1985 at the groundbreaking for University National Bank's new headquarters. The bank later commissioned a new mural of another Venusian, this one crashing a spaceship into the building.

A tip from locals: look up. Brown liked ledges, upper windows and rooftops. Count on spending an extra minute at each address before you spot the joke.

The 2026 downtown murals

The city added a new set of murals downtown in 2026, the biggest round in years. All three appear on the city's murals on view page.

• Dirca Occidentalis, Mona Caron, January 2026. In a narrow alley at 534 Emerson Street, the San Francisco artist painted the western leatherwood, a rare Bay Area native shrub, in early bloom so that it appears to grow out of the wall. Caron is known for botanical murals that sprout from cracks in city walls. Stand at the alley mouth for the full height.
• Palo Alto Discoveries, Nigel Sussman, February 2026. The Berkeley artist covered the alley wall of the Pacific Art League at 668 Ramona Street with bold line work in a limited palette. It layers local history, buildings, culture, plants and animals. Sussman consulted local historians, librarians, residents and league staff.
• Pah-Pah-Pah-Pah, Jya-Jyan!, Harumo Sato, April 2026. A large, colorful wall at All Saints Episcopal Church, 555 Waverley Street. The design grew out of community input and plays with everyday scenes from local life and history.

Caron's and Sussman's walls are both in alleys. That is not an accident. Narrow service alleys give artists tall, blank walls that would be hard to find on a shopping street. The city's public art program has been putting them to use. Glance down the alleys off Emerson, Ramona and Bryant streets as you walk, since new pieces tend to appear there first.

California Avenue murals

The California Avenue district has a mix of permanent pieces and temporary paint. The newest is Phillip Hua's Everything Changes, installed in August 2026 on the city parking garage at 350 Sherman Avenue. Hua based it on conversations with neighbors about how the street has changed. A painted lady butterfly, a symbol of transformation, shifts from realism into abstraction across the facade, with colors that follow the seasons. The city lists it as temporary, so see it while it lasts.

In June 2023 the city staged a large mural event on the street. Olivia Losee-Unger and Nicole Ponsler painted the two wall sites, Palo Alto Central at 149 California Avenue and Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels at 477 California Avenue. Paz de la Calzada painted a ground mural at the Ash Street intersection. The city billed all three as temporary and we could not confirm which survive.

The city's interactive collection map also pins a handful of older works from the early 2000s along the street, mostly toward the Caltrain end. Titles, addresses and media vary and some walls have changed hands since, so open the map on your phone as you walk rather than relying on an old list. The street sits on the site of the old town of Mayfield, which Palo Alto absorbed in 1925. Several pieces nod to that past. Our California Avenue walking tour folds the art into a history walk.

The Cannery mosaic

The most detailed new wall in town is not paint at all. At the former Bayside Cannery, 340 Portage Avenue, artist Kyungmi Shin made a glass mosaic honoring Thomas Foon Chew, the Chinese American businessman known as the Asparagus King. Chew bought the site in 1918. Generations later the building housed Fry's Electronics. The Sobrato Organization converted it into a commercial building and dedicated it in spring 2026. The city lists the mosaic in its public art collection.

Read it from left to right and take your time. The city says the mosaic shows Chew himself, cannery workers, product labels and the patent drawing for the cannery's asparagus sorting machine. Apricot blossoms and fields recall the Santa Clara Valley orchards that fed the cannery. Look for the colorful Bay Side labels, which local reporters singled out at the dedication. Our Thomas Foon Chew page tells the full story.

The Cannery is a private building, so stay on the public frontage. It is a 10 to 15 minute walk from the California Avenue Caltrain station. Use the 340 Portage Avenue address in your map app.

Murals beyond the two main streets

A few more walls are worth a detour if you are already nearby.

• Fire Station 5, Barron Park. Bodeck Luna painted the roll-up door of the station next to Juana Briones Park. Rolling hills and redwoods frame local references, including the station bell, the Gunn Titans, the Fletcher Tigers and a computer cursor, a nod to the area's computing history. When the door is up for a call, the mural disappears, so try again later. Our Barron Park walking tour passes it.
• The rest of the collection. The city's interactive map pins smaller painted and tile pieces at parks, community centers and the Palo Alto Art Center on Newell Road, where the Public Art Program is based. Use it to find the ones near wherever you are.

A one-hour mural loop downtown

This route links the Brown murals and the 2026 walls in about 1.2 miles. Start at the Palo Alto Caltrain station or any downtown garage.

1. Walk up University Avenue to 280 University for Man Pushing Cat in Stroller.
2. Turn onto Emerson Street and find the alley at 534 Emerson for Mona Caron's leatherwood.
3. Head south to Hamilton Avenue and west to 136 Hamilton for Garbage Man with Venusian in Can.
4. Walk east on Hamilton to the 1932 post office at 380 Hamilton for Boy Fishing.
5. Cut over to Ramona Street and walk north to the Pacific Art League alley at 668 Ramona for Nigel Sussman's wall.
6. Continue to Waverley Street for Woman Watering at 526 Waverley, then All Saints Church at 555 Waverley for Harumo Sato's mural.

Add the Arnautoff frescoes at 300 Homer Avenue if you have 15 more minutes. Our downtown guide has coffee and lunch nearby.

Viewing and photo etiquette

How a mural gets made here

Murals on public property and many on private walls go through the city's Public Art Program, which works with a volunteer Public Art Commission. The program issues calls to artists, gathers community input and pays for maintenance on works it owns. Several 2026 artists, including Sussman and Hua, built their designs from interviews with neighbors. The city also funds smaller projects through grants, painted utility boxes and temporary installations that rotate through plazas.

That process explains the mix you see: polished permanent walls in alleys, temporary murals that last a year or two and the odd surviving 1970s gag. It also explains why some pieces vanish. Temporary murals are designed to come down and private owners can repaint or redevelop. Before a special trip, check the city's murals on view page and its Greg Brown murals page.

Want to see sculpture as well as paint? Our sculpture walk links the city's downtown pieces with Stanford's outdoor collection.

Frequently asked questions