The Architect Who Shaped Palo Alto
To understand Birge Clark—who he was, what he designed, and why his work still matters—it helps to imagine Palo Alto when he was growing up.
Born in 1893, a year before Palo Alto was incorporated, Clark spent nearly his entire 96-year life here, apart from four years at Columbia University and a brief, eventful time in the Army. His father, Arthur Bridgman Clark, had come west to teach drawing at the newly established Stanford University. He later became the university’s first head of the Art and Architecture Department, prepared Palo Alto’s first comprehensive plan, served on its first Planning Commission, and was the first mayor of Mayfield. Architecture, planning, and civic life were part of Birge Clark’s world from the beginning.
After graduating from Stanford and earning his architecture degree at Columbia University in 1917, Clark served in the Army Signal Corps during World War I before returning to Palo Alto to help design Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover’s home above Stanford University. In 1922, at just twenty-nine years old, he opened his own practice. By then, Palo Alto had electricity, telephones, automobiles, and ambitions. The population had grown from fewer than 6,000 people in 1920 to nearly 14,000 by 1930. Birge Clark was designing for a city in transformation. As he later recalled in his memoir, “Jobs simply gravitated into my office, and it was only a little more than a year before I moved my office downtown.”
Clark established his practice just as Spanish Colonial Revival was becoming California’s dominant architectural style. He happily embraced what he called “California Colonial” or “Early California” architecture, but he was never confined to a single style. Throughout his career, he approached each commission individually, designing what his clients wanted rather than repeating a signature style. Whether working in Spanish Colonial Revival, Monterey Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival, or another architectural language, his goal was always the same: to design a building that fit his clients’ needs.
Seven Homes on One Street
Between roughly 1923 and 1935, at the height of his career, Birge Clark designed seven houses for seven different clients along Coleridge Avenue between Emerson and Webster Streets. Today, this short stretch remains one of the best places to appreciate the range of his residential work and the remarkable variety of architectural styles he explored.
Architectural historian Paula Boghosian wrote in 1979 that “it seldom happens that a single architect is so influential that his work actually provides a major component of the image of a city.” She identified just three California communities where that had happened: San Diego with Irving Gill, Watsonville with W. H. Weeks, and Palo Alto with Birge Clark. “His hand,” she wrote, “is to be traced in every range of building in the community, and is responsible for the remarkable visual coherence of post-1920s Palo Alto.” The people who came to Birge Clark to build on Coleridge Avenue helped propel his young practice into prominence. They also helped shape Palo Alto into the community it is today.
The seven houses illustrate that philosophy.
232 Coleridge (1925) — Spanish Colonial Revival, built for physician Dr. Joseph Kirk, with a recessed entry, ironwork, and quiet formality.
455 Coleridge (1927) — California Colonial Revival, built for sisters Enid and Mary Ettie Kinney, with decorative plasterwork, a deeply set window, and an iron rod for hanging summer shades.
470 Coleridge (1922/23) — One of Clark’s earliest residential commissions after opening his own office, designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style with Palladian-influenced windows.
512 Coleridge (1928) — A Monterey Revival home designed for George Morell, who asked Clark to depart from his more familiar Spanish Colonial work.
526 Coleridge (1935) — A companion Monterey Revival residence, designed for Mrs. Philip N. Brooke, whose two-story covered balcony echoes its twin at 512 Coleridge.
544 Coleridge (1923) — A Mediterranean Revival home built for Gustav Laumeister, notable for its hand-scored horizontal stucco texture and Palladian doorway.
570 Coleridge (1926) — Tudor Revival, with half-timbering, a brick chimney, and steel casement windows.
Walking Coleridge Avenue, certain details begin to appear again and again. Different styles, different scales, different clients, but the same attentiveness to materials, proportion, and craft. Clark paid particular attention to textured stucco, deeply set front doors, and carefully composed balconies. While Clark believed in designing “things that worked,” he was not immune to using balconies in romantic displays to be seen rather than used.
Clark wrote that he approached every new project as “a problem to be solved,” and that his first effort was always “to be sure that it would work.” He listened carefully and found ways to make beauty from his clients’ wants and needs.
Two of these houses, 512 and 232 Coleridge, were later thoughtfully restored by Fergus Garber Architects. Their stories illustrate both the challenges and the opportunities of adapting historic homes for contemporary living.
“Any client is entitled to your best effort, and your building should fit their needs. You can design a beautiful building, but if it doesn’t function, you’ve got a problem.”
— Birge Clark
Restoring Birge Clark Homes for Modern Living
512 Coleridge
Built in 1928 for George and Athene Morell, 512 Coleridge is notable first for what it isn’t. It is not a Spanish Colonial Revival house. At George Morell’s request, Birge Clark designed it in the far less common Monterey Revival style, inspired by California’s early two-story adobe houses, including the Larkin House in Monterey and the Castro House in San Juan Bautista. Its defining feature, the long second-story balcony supported by heavy timber members, reflects that tradition.
George Morell built his fortune first developing agricultural land in California’s Central Valley and later purchasing the Palo Alto Times, eventually creating one of the Peninsula’s leading newspaper companies. The house reflects a life built at the intersection of land and ink.
The builder was Wells P. Goodenough, one of Clark’s closest collaborators. Together they worked on many of Palo Alto’s most significant buildings, including the Norris and Dunker houses, the Medico-Dental Building, and the Lucie Stern Community Center.
When the current owners hired Fergus Garber Architects to renovate the house, the charge wasn’t to turn it into a museum. It was to give it new life and make it enjoyable for a family to live in today.
The house was built for a very different world. Kitchens were service spaces rather than the center of family life, and houses looked toward the garden rather than opening directly to it. Pools, outdoor rooms, and seamless indoor-outdoor living were simply not part of how families imagined domestic life in 1928.
The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards tell you what to preserve. They do not tell you how to make a nearly one-hundred-year-old house genuinely livable for today’s families.
The renovation restored what gave the house its architectural character while adapting it for another century of use. Modern waterproofing and insulation were added, deteriorated framing and windows repaired, interiors reconfigured, and new family spaces connected the house to the garden. The street-facing façade was restored, keeping what made it beautiful before, beautiful today.
232 Coleridge
Built in 1925 for physician Dr. Joseph Herman Kirk and his wife Angeline, 232 Coleridge reflects the Spanish Colonial Revival style that Clark and many of his clients returned to again and again. Clark often referred to these houses as “Early Californian,” combining elements from different architectural traditions rather than following a single style. The Monterey balcony on the side of the house is one example.
From the street, the house appears as carefully composed as some of Clark’s best-known work. In reality, only the front façade was fully resolved; the sides and rear were comparatively plain, and later additions did little to respect the spirit of the original design.
When the client purchased the house in 2019, Fergus Garber Architects was asked to restore what was significant while thoughtfully transforming the remainder of the property. Original clay roof tiles were carefully removed and reinstalled over new waterproofing. The front door, wrought ironwork, windows, and shutters were restored or faithfully recreated. The rear of the house was entirely reconfigured with new one-story wings, reworked interiors, a relocated garage, an ADU, pool, and gardens, allowing the house to function naturally for contemporary living while preserving its architectural character.
Like 512 Coleridge, the project reflects the broader challenge of historic preservation: understanding what gives a house its character, preserving those qualities with care, and thoughtfully adapting it for the people who live there today.
Beyond Coleridge: The Roth Building and Birge Clark's Legacy
The seven houses on Coleridge Avenue are among the most visible parts of Birge Clark’s residential legacy. By 1928, his practice had expanded well beyond residences, and his work had begun to define the visual identity of Palo Alto that many of us still carry in our heads today.
Working alongside artist and designer Pedro de Lemos, Clark helped shape the Spanish Colonial character of Ramona Street before designing the Cardinal Hotel and the Medico-Dental Building. Beyond downtown, he designed the Dunker and Norris houses, the Fire and Police Station (now Avenidas), the President Hotel (now the Graduate Hotel), the Post Office on Hamilton Avenue, the Lucie Stern Community Center, and dozens of homes throughout Palo Alto and the surrounding communities.
In 1932, Clark designed the building that brings us here today. Originally built as the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, the physicians hoped for a new Art Moderne building. Clark argued instead that the mature California Colonial style would better stand the test of time, and his vision prevailed. The building later became known as the Roth Building and today serves as the home of the Palo Alto Museum.
The Roth Building brings together many of the architectural ideas seen throughout Clark’s work. Its courtyard, heavy timber balcony, clay tile roof, arcades, and carefully composed proportions recall the same architectural language found in the homes on Coleridge Avenue. Nearly a century later, it remains one of Palo Alto’s defining landmarks.
Preserving the Legacy
The Roth Building housed the Palo Alto Medical Clinic for decades before becoming the home of the Palo Alto Museum, an institution dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of this community.
Birge Clark was trained in a tradition that taught architects to be fluent in multiple styles, matching the architectural language to the client, the commission, and the place. Nearly one hundred years after he opened his office, his buildings remain among the most admired in Palo Alto. The houses on Coleridge Avenue continue to be cherished by the families who live in them, and the Roth Building continues to serve the community in a new way.
As Palo Alto Museum President & CEO Marguerite Gong Hancock observed, “Birge Clark designed extraordinary spaces meant to serve people and feel like home.” Preserving the Roth Building will help ensure it continues to do just that. The Museum’s current campaign will complete vital waterproofing repairs, preserve one of Clark’s most significant civic buildings, and breathe new life into it so it can once again welcome the community for generations to come.
About the Presentation
This article is adapted from Daniel Garber’s presentation, Birge Clark’s Coleridge Avenue Legacy, delivered for the Palo Alto Museum’s Inside the Garden Gates benefit on June 28, 2026.
Fergus Garber Architects is grateful to Marguerite Gong Hancock, President & CEO of the Palo Alto Museum, the Museum’s Board of Directors, and the homeowners who generously opened their Birge Clark gardens for this special event.
The complete presentation draws from An Architect Grows Up in Palo Alto: Memoirs of Birge M. Clark, F.A.I.A. (1982), along with Historic Resources Inventory Reports provided by Steven Switzer, Senior Historic Planner for the City of Palo Alto.