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In the 1920s and 1930s one of the most widely read writers in America lived on Cowper Street. Kathleen Norris wrote dozens of novels about marriage, motherhood and family duty. They sold by the millions and paid for a house that was, at the time, the largest and most expensive Birge Clark had designed. Today few people in Palo Alto know her name.
Our page on women in Palo Alto history gives her a short entry. This page tells the fuller story. It draws on Wikipedia, an encyclopedia biography, the Clio's summary of the National Register nomination for her house and Palo Alto Stanford Heritage notes.
A San Francisco girlhood
Kathleen Thompson was born in San Francisco on July 16, 1880, to James Alden Thompson and Josephine Moroney. Both parents died when she was 19. As the eldest child she became, in effect, the head of a large family and had to earn a living.
She worked in a department store, then an accounting office, then the Mechanics' Institute Library. In 1905 she enrolled in a writing program at the University of California, Berkeley. In September 1906, months after the earthquake, the San Francisco Call hired her to write a society column. Through that job she met Charles Gilman Norris, the younger brother of the novelist Frank Norris.
New York and Mother
Charles moved to New York as art editor of The American Magazine. They wrote each other daily for about eight months. Then she followed him east. They married in April 1909. Charles became her literary agent and took on many household duties so she could write.
Her first published story, "The Colonel and the Lady," earned $15.50. Her breakthrough came in 1911 with Mother, which began as a short story in The American Magazine and grew into a short novel. It became a national sensation. Theodore Roosevelt praised it. William Dean Howells gave her 1914 novel Saturday's Child a long review.
Her family grew in hard ways. Their son, Frank, was born in 1910. Twin daughters born in 1912 died in infancy. When her sister Teresa, wife of the poet William Rose Benét, died in 1919, Kathleen took guardianship of Teresa's three children.
A writing business
From 1911 to 1959 Norris was one of the most widely read and highest paid women writers in the United States. Wikipedia counts 93 novels. One encyclopedia puts total sales at about ten million copies. Her work ran in The Atlantic, McClure's, Ladies' Home Journal and other magazines.
- Film. Hollywood adapted her books, among them Butterfly (1924), My Best Girl (1927), Passion Flower (1930) and Change of Heart (1934).
- Radio. CBS aired By Kathleen Norris from October 9, 1939, to September 26, 1941.
- Mail. She wrote a weekly column for the Bell Syndicate and answered about 700 letters a week, according to the Clio.
- Prizes. None. She never won a literary award.
Charles wrote his own novels about social problems, among them Salt (1917), Brass (1921), Bread (1921) and Pig Iron (1925). He also served as president of San Francisco's Bohemian Club.
A family of novelists
Kathleen married into a literary name. Her brother-in-law, Frank Norris, had been one of the best-known American novelists of his day before he died young in 1902. His McTeague (1899) is set in San Francisco. The Octopus (1901) tells of California wheat farmers fighting a railroad modeled on the Southern Pacific, the company that made Leland Stanford rich and paid for the university next to Palo Alto. Our railroad history covers that company's local role.
Charles and Kathleen made writing a joint enterprise. He handled contracts and editors while she produced the books. Both kept writing for decades, so the household turned out novels from two desks at once. Visitors to the Cowper Street house would have found a secretary's office built in for that purpose.
From Saratoga to Cowper Street
In 1919 the family moved back to California, to a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Saratoga. It sat next to Villa Montalvo, the estate of former San Francisco mayor James Duval Phelan. Our Montalvo Arts Center page covers that neighbor today.
By 1927 the Norrises wanted to be closer to San Francisco. They wanted a house big enough to live in, write in and entertain. They chose Palo Alto and hired Birge Clark. Wells Goodenough built it. The Clio, drawing on the National Register nomination, says the house cost $81,000 and was Clark's largest and most expensive Palo Alto work up to that time. It had:
- Bedrooms for seven family members and five staff
- A four-car garage and an office for a secretary
- An outdoor "Spanish kitchen" and a croquet lawn
- Many fireplaces, around a patio framed by one and two story wings
White stucco, a tile roof and handmade ironwork and woodwork make it a showpiece of the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Our pages on Birge Clark and Spanish Colonial Revival in Palo Alto place it among his other work. The family kept the Saratoga ranch for summers.
Faith and causes
Norris was a devout Catholic. Her husband was Episcopalian. Her fiction praised marriage, motherhood and service to others. She wrote Mother partly as an answer to the birth control movement.
She was also an activist. She supported women's suffrage and Prohibition, which suited a town that stayed dry for decades, as our page on Palo Alto's dry years explains. She was a pacifist who favored disarmament. One encyclopedia lists her as a charter member of the America First movement, which opposed American entry into World War II. After the war she campaigned against nuclear testing and capital punishment.
Later life
Charles Norris died on July 25, 1945. One encyclopedia gives 1954, but Wikipedia's entry on him gives 1945. In 1949 the San Francisco diocese bought the Cowper Street house for Stanford's Newman Center, which served Catholic students. It stayed in church hands for about 50 years before returning to private ownership around 2000. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1980.
Kathleen kept writing until she was 80. Arthritis disabled her in the late 1950s and she spent about four years in a San Francisco hospital. Her memoirs are Noon (1925) and Family Gathering (1959). She died of heart failure on January 18, 1966, at 85, at her son's home in San Francisco.
Seeing her Palo Alto today
Good to know
- The Norris House at 1247 Cowper Street is a private home. View it from the sidewalk only and keep your visit short.
- Pair it with other Birge Clark houses on our historic homes guide or the Lucie Stern buildings on Middlefield Road, which date from the same years.
- Copies of her novels still turn up in used bookstores. Our Palo Alto in books page lists other writers tied to the town.
Frequently asked questions
Did Kathleen Norris live in Palo Alto?
Yes. In 1927 she and her husband, the novelist Charles Norris, built a large Spanish Colonial Revival house at 1247 Cowper Street designed by Birge Clark. They used it as their main home and spent summers at their ranch near Saratoga. The house is private today.
How many books did Kathleen Norris write?
Wikipedia counts 93 novels. Other sources say about 90, plus short stories, a syndicated column and two memoirs, Noon (1925) and Family Gathering (1959). One encyclopedia puts her total sales at about ten million copies.
What was Kathleen Norris's most famous book?
Mother, published in 1911, made her name. It began as a short story in The American Magazine and grew into a short novel that Theodore Roosevelt praised. Several of her later novels became Hollywood films.
Is the Kathleen Norris in Palo Alto history the same as the poet?
No. The novelist Kathleen Thompson Norris lived from 1880 to 1966. The American poet and essayist Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota and The Cloister Walk, was born in 1947 and is a different person.
What happened to the Norris House?
In 1949 the San Francisco diocese bought it as the Newman Center for Catholic students at Stanford. It returned to private hands around 2000. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1980.