Old Palo Alto walking tour

Old Palo Alto is the neighborhood of big trees, wide lawns and houses that change style from lot to lot. It grew south of Embarcadero Road after 1902, one owner at a time, so there is no single look. What ties it together is a set of public places and a handful of documented houses, many by Birge Clark. This tour links them in a straight line from Embarcadero Road to the California Avenue train station.

The route sticks to public sites, buildings on the city's Historic Inventory and streets documented in the city's historic survey. It skips celebrity homes on purpose. Our Old Palo Alto guide covers the neighborhood's boundaries and daily life.

Before you go

The walk is about 2.5 miles one way. Start at Bryant Street and Embarcadero Road, about a mile from the Palo Alto Caltrain station or a short walk from the end of our Professorville walking tour. Finish at the California Avenue station and ride Caltrain back. The streets are flat and shaded. Bryant Street is part of the city's main bike boulevard, so expect cyclists at school times. Our bike boulevards guide explains the network.

Spring is the best season. Gamble Garden's beds peak from March to May and front gardens all over the neighborhood bloom at the same time.

The route, stop by stop

1. Castilleja School, Bryant Street at Embarcadero Road. The private girls' school at 1310 Bryant was founded in the early 1900s. Its address appears on the city inventory as Category 3. Its long-running expansion debate is a local touchstone. View the campus from the street.
2. Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden, 1431 Waverley Street. Walk east to Waverley. Edwin and Elizabeth Gamble built the first house south of Embarcadero here in 1902. Contractor C. A. Bates built the house and carriage house for $6,039 and formal gardens by Walter A. Hoff followed in 1908. The city rates the property Category 2. The 2.5-acre grounds are free and open daily. See our Gamble Garden guide.
3. Bowling Green Park, 474 Embarcadero Road. A few steps east. The lawn bowling green opened on March 10, 1935. It still has eight rinks on one grass green. Our lawn bowling page covers free lessons.
4. Lucie Stern Community Center, 1305 Middlefield Road. Continue to Middlefield and cross at the signal. Birge Clark designed this Spanish Revival complex in the 1930s with Lucie Stern's money. Its theater, children's theater and ballroom sit around a patio with a circular fountain. The city inventory rates it Category 1. The courtyard is usually open during center hours. Our theater guide lists what is on stage.
5. Children's Library, 1276 Harriet Street. Around the corner. Another Stern gift, opened in 1940. The city calls it the oldest freestanding children's library in the country. See our libraries guide.
6. Rinconada Park. The 19-acre park wraps around the library and the rebuilt Junior Museum and Zoo. It is the best restroom and water stop on the route. See our Rinconada Park guide.
7. Coleridge Avenue, between Cowper and Webster streets. Cross back over Middlefield into Old Palo Alto. Clark designed every house on this block, which makes it a one-block lesson in his residential style. All are private homes.
8. Lucie Stern's house, 1990 Cowper Street. Walk south on Cowper. Clark designed the philanthropist's own home. The city inventory rates it Category 1, as it does two neighbors on the same stretch of Cowper. It is a private residence.
9. The Seale Addition. Cut west to Waverley or Bryant and walk south. The city's historic survey describes this area around Coleridge Avenue and its cross streets as several hundred homes built from about 1900 to 1940, lot by lot, by individual owners. That is why a Spanish Revival house can sit next to a Tudor cottage.
10. The Emery Subdivision. Near the southern end, the blocks around Byron, Webster, Santa Rita and North California filled in during the 1930s and 1940s. Notice the smaller lots and the more uniform setbacks.
11. Bowden Park, 2380 High Street. Head west to High Street. This small city park sits beside the Caltrain tracks near North California Avenue.
12. California Avenue station underpass. Use the pedestrian underpass to cross the tracks and finish at the station. The California Avenue shops are right there. Our station guide has train details.

Styles to spot

Old Palo Alto has no single style and that is the point of walking it. A short list helps:

Look at driveways too. Older houses usually have a detached garage at the back of a long drive. Newer houses tend to fill more of the lot. Lots in the neighborhood average about 9,000 square feet and a few estates exceed an acre.

Birge Clark's neighborhood

Downtown has Clark's commercial buildings. Old Palo Alto and the blocks around Rinconada Park have his best residential and civic work. Lucie Stern, the city's leading philanthropist in the 1930s, kept him busy during the Depression with the community center, the Children's Library and houses for her family. His Spanish Revival look became so tied to Palo Alto that later builders copied it, so not every stucco house you pass is his. Our Birge Clark page lists his buildings by address.

Sidewalk etiquette

Variations

Garden loop, 45 minutes. Do stops 2 to 6 only and return along Embarcadero Road. It suits families, since the Junior Museum and Zoo is right there. See our Junior Museum and Zoo guide for tickets.

Keep going. From the California Avenue station, continue with our California Avenue walking tour, which starts on the same platform. Lunch on the car-free blocks makes a natural break.

Want a recorded guide for the rest of the Peninsula? Browse self-guided audio tours and save them for the train.

A short history of the neighborhood

When Palo Alto was young, Embarcadero Road was the edge of town. Edwin Percy Gamble, a son of Procter and Gamble cofounder James Gamble, built the first house beyond it in 1902. Other families followed over the next three decades, buying single lots rather than tract houses. By the end of World War II the neighborhood was built out. The Gamble family's daughter Elizabeth left the house and garden to the city when she died in 1981. A nonprofit has run it as a public garden since 1985.

Today the neighborhood is one of the most expensive in Palo Alto and many older houses have been replaced. That makes the inventory houses and the Clark block on Coleridge Avenue more valuable as a record of what the area looked like. Category ratings on this page come from the City of Palo Alto's Historic Inventory list. Subdivision names and dates come from the city's historic survey.

Frequently asked questions