College Terrace walking tour

College Terrace is small enough to see in one walk and odd enough to remember. Alexander Gordon laid it out in 1887 as a town called Palo Alto, gave up the name at Leland Stanford's request and named his cross streets for colleges in alphabetical order. Four little parks from his plan still sit where he drew them. A 1936 Spanish Revival library anchors the middle.

This loop walks the alphabet from Yale to Amherst and back. Every named building is public or on an official list: the National Register or the City of Palo Alto's Historic Inventory. The rest of the walk is about street names, parks and the shape of the plan. Our College Terrace guide has the full history.

Before you go

The loop runs about 2 miles and takes 1 to 1.5 hours. Start at El Camino Real and College Avenue. The California Avenue Caltrain station is about half a mile east across El Camino, so the walk combines easily with lunch on California Avenue. Street parking near campus is tight. Coming on foot, by bike or by train is easier.

The library is the only indoor stop. It has restrooms during open hours. Check the city library website before you count on them.

The route, stop by stop

1. El Camino Real at College Avenue. The neighborhood's small commercial edge sits between Yale Street and the highway. Oxford Avenue nearby is a survivor of an early map that also showed Cambridge. Our El Camino Real history explains the old road.
2. Kee House, 2310 Yale Street. Turn onto Yale. This private home joined the National Register on April 11, 1985. The city inventory rates it Category 3. A second Yale Street house, at 2130, is also on the inventory.
3. Williams and Wellesley streets. Walk west along College Avenue, the neighborhood's spine. Notice the regular grid and narrow lots. Yale, Williams and Wellesley come in reverse alphabetical order as you head toward campus.
4. College Terrace Library, 2300 Wellesley Street. The oldest of Palo Alto's branch libraries was built in 1936 as a Works Progress Administration project. Charles K. Sumner designed it in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The city moved it from Category 4 to Category 2 on April 7, 2008. A full renovation followed in 2010. Our libraries guide covers hours and services.
5. Mayfield Park. Beside the library. Originally Hollywood Park, it was renamed in 1968 for the former town of Mayfield. College Terrace joined Palo Alto along with Mayfield in 1925.
6. Donaldina M. Cameron Park. Walk north on Wellesley between College Avenue and Stanford Avenue. Once Berkeley Park, it honors a Presbyterian missionary in San Francisco's Chinatown who lived locally. It has a playground.
7. Princeton, Oberlin and Harvard streets. Return to College Avenue and continue west. The city inventory lists five houses on College Avenue. Look for older cottages and bungalows between newer rebuilds.
8. Frederick W. Weisshaar Park. Turn onto Dartmouth Street toward California Avenue. The former Hampton Park is named for one of the two original landowners and has two tennis courts.
9. William C. Werry Park. Cross College Avenue to the other half of Dartmouth. The former Eton Park honors a Mayfield resident who was Palo Alto's postmaster from 1924 to 1935.
10. Cornell Street. The one name Gordon did not choose. It was Washington Street until the 1925 merger with Palo Alto, when duplicate names had to go.
11. Columbia, Bowdoin and Amherst streets. The last letters of the alphabet run backward toward the start. Amherst is the street nearest campus.
12. Stanford Avenue. Finish on the northern edge, facing Escondido Village, a large Stanford housing area. Walk back along Stanford Avenue and College Avenue to El Camino, or cross into campus.

The alphabet, decoded

Gordon's street names were a sales pitch. A university was coming and he wanted his lots to sound academic. The cross streets march in order from Amherst to Yale:

The renaming of 1925 touched more than Cornell. College Avenue was Palo Alto Avenue, a leftover from Gordon's original town name. Mayfield's main street, Lincoln, became California Avenue in the same round. Our Mayfield history covers that merger.

Four parks from 1887

Gordon's plan set aside four small parks. All survive and the city renamed them in 1968 for people tied to the area. No house in the neighborhood is more than a few minutes from one. Cameron and Werry parks have playgrounds and Weisshaar has two tennis courts, according to the residents' association. City parks close from 10:30 p.m. until sunrise. They are small and quiet, which makes them good for a picnic on this walk. Bring something from California Avenue.

What to look for

College Terrace was built slowly, lot by lot, over more than a century. That makes it a good place to practice reading a streetscape. Look for small early cottages set close to the street, 1920s and 1930s bungalows with front porches, postwar ranch houses and large recent rebuilds that fill most of their lots. Narrow lots on a regular grid explain why the houses sit so close together. The library is the only public building of real architectural note, so take a few minutes there to study its tile roof, arched entry and simple stucco walls, a civic version of the Spanish Revival style that Birge Clark made famous downtown.

The town that lost its name

Peter Spacher and Frederick Weisshaar bought about 120 acres here in 1870 and refused to sell to Leland Stanford when he was assembling his stock farm. In 1887 they sold to Alexander Gordon, who platted lots and called his town Palo Alto. Stanford wanted that name for Timothy Hopkins's new town north of campus, then called University Park. Gordon agreed to rename his tract College Terrace and the Hopkins town became Palo Alto. College Terrace was later tied to Mayfield and joined Palo Alto when Mayfield did in 1925.

Sidewalk etiquette

Extending the walk

From Stanford Avenue it is a short walk into campus. Our self-guided Stanford campus walk picks up from there. Heading the other way, cross El Camino Real for our California Avenue walking tour, which covers the rest of old Mayfield. For more on how the city lists buildings like the library and the Kee House, see our historic homes guide.

Prefer to listen? Browse Stanford and Bay Area tours for a guided visit to campus next door.

Listing dates come from National Park Service records as summarized by Wikipedia. Categories come from the city's Historic Inventory list. Park names and history follow the College Terrace Residents' Association and the city.

Frequently asked questions