| The Palo Alto History Project |
| Birge Clark |
| Birge Clark: An Architectural Legacy It’s rare these days that a single architect can have that much influence on the look of an entire city. But in days past, before the big architectural firms, sometimes local architects could essentially design their own cities, integrating entire blocks of buildings and giving a city a comprehensive theme. Birge Clark did not lay out Palo Alto in the way that urban grids were surveyed in Washington by Peter Charles L’Enfant or in Philadelphia by Thomas Holme. But he had a major influence over the look of Palo Alto by building many of its most important civic structures and houses --- much as Brasilia’s Oscar Niemeyer or San Diego’s Irving Gill did for larger metropolises. During a career spanning five decades, Clark built 98 Palo Alto houses and nearly 400 buildings in and around town --- including the downtown Post Office, 2 major hotels, the Community Center, police and fire building, Children’s Library, the Sea Scout Building and on and on. In many ways what we know as Palo Alto today is a realization of the architectural imagination of Birge Clark. Birge Clark’s father was an architect, Stanford Professor and mayor of Mayfield. A longtime friend of Herbert Hoover, Arthur Clark constructed the future president’s home in 1919 with assistance from young Birge. After attending Paly High, Stanford and Columbia University, Birge served in World War I, earning the Silver Star for Gallantry after being shot out of an observation balloon by a German pilot and parachuting to safety. Returning home to Palo Alto, he set up shop in 1922, becoming one of just two licensed architects working between San Jose and San Francisco. Like a country doctor, Clark did a little of everything --- houses, schools, public buildings, libraries. And as the city grew in the first half of the 20th Century, Clark was the only architect in town. He was also immensely talented. In his early days, Clark worked almost exclusively in the fairly short-lived, but locally popular architectural style, variously referred to as Spanish Colonial Revival, California Colonial or the closely-related, Mission Revival. Although there were variations, the style most often consisted of stucco wall, red clay roof tiles, cast concrete ornaments and wrought iron grilles. Popular between 1915 and 1931, this romantic fashion caught on in many places with a Spanish past --- Florida, Texas and especially California. In fact, in 1920’s Santa Barbara, the style became so popular that the city government actually legislated all buildings to be constructed in Mission Revival style --- with compulsory specifics written into law. In Palo Alto, the style dominated more naturally, in part because it recalled a Spanish past that were at the roots of El Palo Alto and the city’s founding. But while Spanish motifs may have been all the rage in 1920s California, things were a little different back East. Presenting his blueprints for Palo Alto’s post office to the nation’s postmaster general in Washington, Clark was ridiculed. As long-time employee and associate Joseph Ehrlich tells the story, “The postmaster pushed them away and said, ‘Don’t you know what a U.S. post office looks like? We expect a stately building with neo-Romanesque columns showing the power of the federal government. I cannot approve this design.’…Birge responded, ‘Ok, but I don’t think the President and First Lady are going to be pleased with the design change.’” After revealing that the Hoovers had already approved the plans while Clark was breakfasting with his old friends that morning, the postmaster had a sudden change of heart and approved every blueprint in front of him. During his life, Clark always admitted to being lucky. During the Great Depression when many architects closed up shop, Clark stayed in business in large part doing work for Kaiser Permanente and Palo Alto’s premiere benefactor, Lucie Stern. Thanks to Stern’s generosity, Clark built some of his most memorable structures such as the recently renovated Children’s Library and the Lucie Stern Community Center. And although Clark became most famous for his Spanish-influenced works like the Roth Building on Homer Street, the Hotel President on University and the Medico-Dental Building on Hamilton, he also ventured into other styles during the later part of his career. His “Streamline Moderne” buildings include the former GM dealership at 790 High Street and the soon-to-be renovated Sea Scout building (designed to resemble a ship) out in the Baylands. He also played with the “form equals function” credo of modernism, especially in his work for Hewlett-Packard and Stanford. Finally, many of the city’s best known and most prestigious homes were also built by Clark, including the Norris House at 1247 Cowper Street, the Dunker House at 420 Maple Street and Lucie Stern’s own house at 1990 Cowper. And one street still stands as a kind of Birge Clark museum --- he designed every one of the homes on Coleridge Avenue between Cowper and Webster. Palo Alto has been called “The City that Birge Built” and the work of his career remains on display all over town. Before his death in 1989, Clark told an interviewer: “You know they say a doctor buries his mistakes, and a lawyer's mistakes go to prison. All an architect has to do to avoid his mistakes is drive around the block.” Take a drive around Palo Alto’s blocks these days and one thing you won’t find are many Birge Clark mistakes. -Matt Bowling |
| Birge poses next to the engraving at the downtown Post Office (PAHA) |
| The Sea Scout Building before the yacht harbor was no more |
| The Children's Theatre at the Community Center (PAHA) |
| The Children's Library in the 1940s (PAHA) |
| The Lucie Stern House on Cowper Street |
| Birge Clark posting with his wife Estele (PAHA) |
| Palo Alto: Then & Now |
| 2007 |
1928 |
| The Hotel President in the 1920s (PAHA) |
| The Ramona Street Architectural District, much of it designed by Birge Clark |
| The Roth Building is the former home of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. It may soon be the home to a new Palo Alto History Museum. |
| A look down Coleridge Avenue, a kind of Birge Clark museum |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto Weekly, San Francisco Weekly, Palo Alto Historical Association, Wikipedia, "Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area" by Dave Weinstein, Birge Clark's Memoirs |
| Above left is a shot of Hamilton Avenue in 1928 with Birge Clark's Medico-Dental building at center. Behind it further down Hamilton is the Cardinal Hotel, built by H.W. Weeks with Birge Clark's assistance as the "local architect" --- a position Clark vowed never to take again after construction was finished. The Medico-Building and Cardinal Hotel still stand although our view is now blocked out by a tree and modernist office building. Centennial Walk is between the modern building and the Medico-Dental Building. |
| The Community Center in the 1940s (PAHA) |
| The Community Center today |
| 2007 |
1946 |
| Birge Clark's Palo Alto Post Office in 1946 as viewed from across Hamilton Avenue. Period cars, a very tall flag pole and ivy are all apparent. Today the flagpole sans flag remains on the corner, while additional street clutter and trees have appeared over the intervening 61 years. The ivy, however, is no longer. City Hall and the building at 300 Hamilton loom at far right. |
| A postcard of the Norris House |
| The Dunker House on Maple Street |
| "I got home about 7 o'clock that night and Walter Stromquist was on the phone and he said, 'Birge Clark suggested that I interview you, are you still interested in going to work for us.' I said, 'absolutely!' They offered me the same salary I was getting, $2.50 an hour. That was the going rate for a non-licenced, but still trained professional. So I gave my boss in SF a two week notice and went to work in a little office. Birge had virtually stopped doing houses. They would occasionally do a house. Their main connection then was with Henry Kaiser. But he realized if he kept working for one huge client, he could no longer do housing or schools. So he notified Kaiser he could no longer work for them. It took a lot of courage. Birge Clark was an exceptional, not only architect, but a human being." -Joe Ehrlich |
| Memories added by readers: |
| "I was writing an article for the VA Hospital's newsletter in 1980 about earthquakes. Someone referred me to Birge Clark. I called him and he said that although he was pretty young, he recalled dust coming up from the Stanford Memorial Church. Also, he said he could clearly see the smoke and some flames from the San Francisco area. I could tell from over the phone that he seemed to be very kind. I wasn't much of a writer and he made some valuable suggestion on what I could include in my article. I didn't know he was an architect. He said I might want to interview our engineering chief in connection to the seismic safety of our building, given that our proximity to the San Andreas Fault puts us in the highest earthquake risk zone (#5). He also recommended that I call USGS for more information. Like I said, he was a very kindly person." -Andy |