| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Stanford Shopping Center 680 Stanford Shopping Center |
| The Stanford Shopping Center: Puttin' on the Ritz In many ways Palo Alto’s Stanford Shopping Center represents the story of the typical American mall. Built in the early days of American’s great suburban migration, the new shopping plaza north of Stanford and just west of El Camino Real immediately drew shoppers away from the traditional downtown Palo Alto commercial district. And yet Stanford Shopping Center has never been completely typical. Founded as a special source of income for Stanford University, its beginnings certainly were unique. Furthermore, as an outdoor center which has grown in stages and also undergone a dramatic upscale shift over the years, the Stanford Shopping Center has never been easily classified. These days it hardly resembles the typical multi- tiered, air conditioned “box with food court” that is the prototypical American mall. As Palo Alto has become the capital of Silicon Valley’s success, the Stanford Shopping Center has grown to accommodate the new wealth that has flooded the city. Long gone are Palo Alto’s days as a sleepy small town --- and long gone are the days of the Stanford Shopping Center as a sleepy small town mall. The Stanford Shopping Center began as a rather ingenious way for the financially strapped Stanford University of the early 1950s to make some money on the side. In 1947, Business Manager Alf Brandin began pushing a plan to cash in on Stanford’s abundance of undeveloped land through the construction of a mall --- the profits from which would go directly to the university’s general fund. A shopping mall in Palo Alto did make some economic sense. Consumer studies done at the time demonstrated that thousands of locals weathered the long train ride to San Francisco to spend nearly $200 million annually at department stores in Union Square and around the big city. Put some of those San Francisco stores down in Palo Alto, Brandin figured, and locals would simply motor over to park and shop right in their own hometown. Although an outside firm recommended that the center be built on the auto row area of Menlo Park along El Camino, the university eventually settled on developing the 62 acres they owned further south on the King’s Highway just within the Palo Alto border. In 1953, the first rumblings of construction began in those hay fields and by 1956 the $15 million Stanford Shopping Center was open for business. Stanford was now the nation’s first university to buffer its own endowment pool by building itself a mall. But by comparison to what the Stanford Shopping Center has become, this initial effort was modest --- maybe even a bit homespun. These were the early days of the American mall and shopping was still seen as more business than pleasure. Malls today cater to what consumers want more than what they need, but original malls were all about necessity. While today the Stanford Shopping Center has stores offering to dress your baby fashionably, put an adorable sweater on your pet or sell you the perfect recliner designed for a first grader, the original mall was a little more meat and potatoes. The 1956 center included Purity Market, Woolworth’s, Donnelley’s Hardware Store, a thrift store, a shoe repair shop and literal meat and potatoes at Eat-Rite restaurant. And as Alf Brandin had hoped, the new mall also lured some of San Francisco’s most prestigious department stores down the Peninsula such as The Emporium, Sommer & Kauffman Shoes and I Magnin & Co. Still, despite a collection of stores that would feel at home on any Main Street USA, the new shopping center was tough on Palo Alto’s own main street. Many of the downtown stores rushed to set up shop at the new mall --- some even choosing to close their long-standing University Avenue locations. Roos Bros. for example, settled into their modern 17,000 square foot Stanford Shopping Center location in 1955 just as they let their downtown lease expire. Of course, it’s not as if downtown merchants didn’t see it coming. In fact, after plans were announced in 1952 that Stanford would be turning their pastures into profits, Hillsdale Shopping Center builder David Bohannan proposed a massive overhaul of Downtown Palo Alto to rival the coming economic threat. His plan to replace most of the buildings between Alma and Cowper along University Avenue with “an even larger shopping center in the heart of downtown” symbolized the widespread loss of faith in the American city during those years. As Bohannan said, “such developments are going to save many cities and fill the needs of our society.” In reality, the plan would pretty much have flattened downtown in favor of five large department stores and a half dozen double-decked parking lots --- requiring the razing of every building in a 50 acre area. Thankfully, the momentum for this nuclear approach died down when the Stanford Shopping Center became a reality. Still, there was no doubt that for more than three decades, downtown was hurt by the competition. As was repeated in hundreds of American cities in the 1960s and ‘70s, Palo Alto’s downtown could not compete with the free parking and convenience of the suburban shopping center. By the 1970s empty storefronts had increasingly made University Avenue a ghost town. And the Stanford Shopping Center was not exactly resting on their laurels. Newer and more illustrious department stores opened at the mall: Macy’s in 1961, Saks in 1963, Bullock’s (later Nordstrum) in 1972 and Neiman-Marcus in 1985. Additionally, the hiring of Rosemary McAndrews in the early 1970s signaled a move toward a more high- end shopping experience. In 1976, the Palo Alto City Council approved an enormous expansion of the center that allowed McAndrews to go to town. Policy was changed to force many stores into smaller quarters and some larger leases were bought out. McAndrews then took to fashioning the old mall into a sort of European street fair. Using photos of markets and shopping plazas she took while on trips to the Old World, McAndrews made what was once a good place to buy a new lawnmower or ladder into the place to purchase a trendy Italian sports coat or rare oriental fragrance. The appearance changed dramatically, as well, with the addition of lush gardens, fanciful sculptures and a grand mural of a European market rather self-consciously referred to as the “Rue du chat qui peche." By 1985, the Euro strategy had paid off, quite literally, as its 150 stores led the Peninsula with annual earnings of $250 million. In the 1990s, the Stanford Shopping Center took yet another step into high class swankiness when the Emporium was replaced by the first Bloomingdale's to open west of the Rockies. Its "Ultimate Premiere" in November 1996 featured a sold-out concert with Liza Minnelli singing at a tent party catered by Paula LeDuc --- and an entrance fee running between $250 and $1,000. These days at Stanford Shopping Center, which has been leased to professional mallers Simon Property Group, you can also breakfast at Tiffany’s, eat French bread at La Baguette or tempt your sweet tooth at Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland. But is Palo Alto on its way to becoming the Beverly Hills of the north? In this new millennium, University Avenue has bounced back largely by imitating the Stanford Shopping Center’s appeal to higher tax brackets. Now as the mall is set to expand yet another 240,000 square feet and add a new luxury hotel, the question looms whether long-time Palo Altans will be permanently priced out of their own hometown. -Matt Bowling |
| Hay fields become a shopping center. (PA Times) |
| An early sketch of the Stanford Shopping Center proposal. |
| Palo Alto: Then & Now |
| 2008 |
| circa 1956 |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto Daily News, Palo Alto Historical Association, Stanford Shopping Center Website |
| The map below shows the Northwest area of Palo Alto. Move in or out with the +/- symbols in the corner... |
| An old postcard showing the F.W. Woolworth's at the Stanford Shopping Center. |
| An overhead shot of the Stanford Shopping Center in the 1960s. The Macy's store is apparent at center left and The Emporium at center right. Parking lots surround the mall in these days before the parking structures were built. (PAHA) |
| An ad for Purity Market shows the original layout of the mall with an "E" for The Emporium and "P" for Purity. The Macy's had not yet arrived. (PA Times) |
| Looking down one of the well-groomed walkways. |
| La Baguette is just one of the many European-esque stores at the center. |
| A 50s era ad for the Woolworths at the center. Note the pipe-smoking dad. |
| The center in the 1980s, with its arched theme. |
| Pottery Barn for Kids sells fashionable furniture for kids. |
| Bowlicious Pet Boutique is one of many specialty stores at today's Stanford Shopping Center. |
| The center courtyard at the center. |
| The so-called "Rue du chat qui peche." |
| Rosemary McAndrews brought class to the old mall. (PAHA) |
| Even the McDonalds has a grand piano at the Stanford Shopping Center. |
| The first Bloomingdale's west of the Rockies. |
| An enormous mural reigns over Tiffany's, the Stanford Shop and Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland. |
| When Neiman-Marcus opened in 1985, it gave the Stanford Shopping Center another large department store. (PAHA) |
| Two shots of the Stanford Shopping Center separated by more than 50 years. Above left is the Emporium store which debuted at the center in 1956 and remained into the 1990s when it was replaced by Bloomingdale's. The distinctive E insignia so well-known to shoppers of the 1950s means nothing to many of the patrons of Bloomingdale's today. |
| "I remember this mall in the mid 60's to early 70's as I went there every Saturday with my family. My mother got her hair done at the Emporium, and my Dad and I went to breakfast at Sandy's Kitchen across from Macy's. Sometimes we'd go to Woodland's which was on the El Camino side of the big E. I remember Woolworth's, and Lerner's, and the shoe store with the monkeys in the window (Sommer and Kaufman I think). I. Magnin, Joseph Magnin, Blum's for special occasions (coffee crunch cake). Purity Market was there, and a bakery next door. Saks and Bullocks were on the other side, and the Stanford Barn where you could choose from several different cuisines and then have candy from the place with the huge Stanford Indian mascot on the wall. The Perfect Recipe was a little earthy restaurant on the north side of the center mall." -Lori |
| Memories added by readers: |
| "My mother worked at Emporium, which is also gone, and there was a hardware store, and a supermarket. It was a family-kind of place. Emporium was definitely family-style purchases. Nothing fancy, nothing trendy. Now it's a Bloomingdale's. My mother worked there in the 1970s in the wig department and we'd head down there on our bikes to borrow money." -Mal |
| "I had my first summer job at The Stanford Barn. It was an early version of what it now known as a Food Court: many different types of food vendors along the walls tables and chairs in the center. I worked at Mel's Seafoods and Salads, which was right inside the main door. I don't remember all of the other types of food counters in there, but I'm sure there was a counter that served Chinese food, and another that served Mexican food. What I always wondered was whether the building that housed us really was Stanford's barn where he kept his race horses." -K.C. |