Lucie Stern

Walk into almost any Palo Alto institution built in the 1930s and you meet Lucie Stern. Her name is on the community center on Middlefield Road, where TheatreWorks and Palo Alto Players perform. Children in the city's theater program rehearse in rooms she paid for. Generations of kids picked their first library books in the small Spanish style building she gave on Harriet Street.

She was not a Palo Alto native and she did not seek attention. Local accounts call her the city's "fairy godmother." This page tells her story from Lorraine to Middlefield Road and explains what she built. Sources include the Palo Alto Historical Association and a monograph by Michael Litfin that the association republished.

From Lorraine to San Francisco

Lucie Cahen was born in 1871 in French Lorraine. Her family moved to San Francisco when she was three. In 1899 she married Louis Stern in a society wedding. Louis was a nephew of Levi Strauss and a partner in the family's dry goods and clothing business. The marriage tied her to one of the city's wealthiest Jewish families.

Louis's work took the couple to New York for several years. Their family life there was marked by loss. According to the historical association, their first two children, Louisa and Louis Jr., died in infancy in 1900 and 1901. The family returned to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. In 1908 their daughter Dorothea died of pneumonia at five.

Ruth, their youngest, was the only child to survive. At 12, while the family lived in an Atherton mansion, she began having seizures. They permanently affected her development and she needed care for the rest of her life. Litfin wrote that "Lucie's over-protection for Ruth became what we would today call an obsession." He also wrote that her love for her daughter "seemed to broaden into concern for others, too."

Coming to Palo Alto

Louis Stern died in 1924. Lucie now controlled a very large fortune. She chose Palo Alto as home and hired a young local architect, Birge Clark, to design adjoining houses for herself and Ruth. Her own house at 1990 Cowper Street in Old Palo Alto is rated Category 1, the top tier, in the city's historic inventory. She also had a house built nearby for the family of her personal French chef.

The Depression arrived a few years later. Many architects lost their practices. Clark stayed busy, in large part because Lucie Stern kept commissioning buildings for her family and for the city. Her Spanish Colonial Revival gifts did much to set the look of 1930s Palo Alto. Our Old Palo Alto walking tour passes her house and the community center.

The Lucie Stern Community Center

Palo Alto already had a community house. The Hostess House, a World War I building moved into town and dedicated in 1919, served clubs, dances and meetings. By the early 1930s it was too small. According to the history of the Hostess House by Ruth Winslow, the city gladly accepted a larger community theater from Lucie Stern in 1933. Our page on the Hostess House tells that side of the story.

Sources date the first Stern buildings to 1932 or 1933. Wings followed through the 1930s according to Clark's master plan. Wells P. Goodenough was the builder. The finished complex at 1305 Middlefield Road holds:

• The Lucie Stern Theatre, with about 400 seats, now home to TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Palo Alto Players and West Bay Opera.
• The Children's Theatre and its workshops.
• A ballroom used for classes, dances and events.
• A patio with a circular fountain, framed by white stucco and red tile.

The city rates the complex Category 1 in its historic inventory. It sits beside Rinconada Park and the Children's Library. Our page on the Lucie Stern Community Center covers a visit and our theater guide lists current shows.

A home for the Children's Theatre

The Palo Alto Children's Theatre began in 1932. Its founder was Hazel Glaister Robertson, who led it into the 1950s. It was unusual from the start because the city ran it as part of public recreation rather than as a private club. The city's own description calls it one of the first children's theaters of its kind in the nation.

Lucie Stern was the theater's first great friend. She paid for an auditorium in the community center dedicated as its home. A city history cited on a landmark listing dates that gift to 1937. She also brought ice cream to rehearsals, according to the stories collected by her biographer.

A 1952 film made by the theater's own staff, Children and the Theater: The Palo Alto Experiment in Recreation, shows what the program had become. It describes stage, film and radio workshops, experimental performances on San Francisco television station KRON and "trooping" shows taken to nearby towns. It even mentions young offenders working at the theater as part of juvenile court sentences. The film was Robertson's last production and her only appearance on screen. Our page on the Palo Alto Children's Theatre covers today's classes and shows.

The Children's Library

In 1939 Lucie Stern gave $17,000 to build a library just for children. Clark designed it on Harriet Street, next to the community center. He formally presented it to the city on her behalf on September 14, 1940. She dedicated it to Ruth.

The gift nearly fell through. The historical association reports that the city council first asked her to pay for staffing as well. She withdrew her offer. The council later apologized and the project went ahead.

Inside, everything was sized for children: low mahogany shelves, small tilted picture tables, chairs in three sizes and a fireplace surrounded by nursery rhyme characters. Behind the building lies a secret garden with roses, arched trees and picnic tables, modeled on the one in Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel.

The city calls it the oldest freestanding children's library in the country. The historical association goes further and calls it the first library in the United States built only for children. In the late 1990s it appeared on a list of possible closures. An anonymous donor offered $175,000, plus another $200,000 if matched. The Palo Alto Library Foundation and Friends of the Palo Alto Library went on to raise $1.7 million from more than 1,300 donors. After a renovation and expansion that closed it for nearly two years, it reopened. Our libraries guide covers visiting.

Other gifts and the "Aunt Lucie" stories

The historical association credits Stern with more city gifts, among them Rinconada Pool and the Junior Museum. Other accounts add a Boy Scouts fire circle and gifts in Ruth's name to the city, Stanford and the Boy Scouts of America. Dates and amounts for these smaller gifts are hard to pin down, so treat the list as a guide rather than a ledger.

Stanford students knew her as "Aunt Lucie." Accounts say she hosted students for dinner, lent them money and kept a closet of clothes they could choose from. She made large gifts to the university as well. Neighborhood children remembered the big 10-cent candy bars she handed out on Halloween.

Death and legacy

Lucie Stern died in Palo Alto in 1946. Her typewritten will named executors from the Haas and Koshland families, both tied to the Levi Strauss business.

Her buildings are still in daily use. The table below sums up what you can see.

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