Palo Alto - Professorville - Neighborhood Tour

Professorville is a Registered Historic District in Palo Alto, California that contains homes that were used by Stanford University professors who preferred to own rather than lease university land. The area is bounded by Kingsley, Lincoln, and Addison avenues and the cross streets of Ramona, Bryant, and Waverly. The Professorville Historic District reflects the area's origins and its early years to the founding of both Stanford University and Palo Alto itself.

The area's eclectic architecture is known for its brown shingles with gambrel roofs. Classic examples are Professor Angell's home at 1005 Bryant and the Bernard Maybeck-designed "Sunbonnet House" at 1061 Bryant. Professor A. B. Clark designed the stately 433 Melville house for Professor Charles Gilbert, one of Stanford's first teachers and a leading citizen of Palo Alto.

Stately Dutch Colonials dominate three blocks of Kingsley Avenue. At 450 Kingsley Avenue is the former home of one of Stanford University's pioneer professors, Ferando Sanford, who headed the physics department. The architect, Frank McMurray of Chicago, was a former student of Professor Sanford. He designed the three-story, 14-room frame house with a variety of features fashionable at the time--a Queen Anne corner tower, a Palladian window in front and an unusual archway reaching out past the second story. The comfortable, columned front porch reaches across the front to the west side of the house, where a doorway, once the carriage entrance, has been covered over.

The buildings, which give the Professorville area its strongest image, are the brown-shingled houses whose stylistic allegiances range from the Colonial Revival to the American Craftsman.

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