Historic houses of worship in Palo Alto

When Palo Alto was laid out in the late 1880s, its founders wrote liquor bans into the deeds but left churches to the residents. Congregations formed quickly, meeting in rented halls until they could build. Within about fifteen years the young town had Episcopal, Methodist, Catholic and Unitarian congregations within a few blocks of each other downtown. Later decades added a Black church on Ramona Street, a Buddhist temple serving Japanese American families and synagogues and other congregations across the Midpeninsula.

This page traces the documented history of the oldest congregations and their buildings. It is written for readers interested in architecture and local history and it does not rank or review any congregation. Founding dates come from the congregations themselves, Wikipedia, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and architecture records. Where we could not confirm a date, we say so.

All Saints Episcopal: the 1892 beginning

The oldest congregation we could document is All Saints Episcopal Church. Its own history begins on September 20, 1892, when about forty people met for the first time in Lirio Hall, two blocks from the present site. The mission was formally organized four months later.

• April 1895: The first church building is consecrated.
• 1899: All Saints becomes a parish in its own right.
• 1967: The original shingled redwood church is replaced.
• March 1968: The present poured concrete sanctuary at 555 Waverley Street, designed by William Guy Garwood, is dedicated.
• 1980: The parish joins the new Diocese of El Camino Real.

The congregation will mark 135 years in 2027.

St. Thomas Aquinas: the oldest church building

Farther south on Waverley Street stands the building usually called the oldest church in Palo Alto. St. Thomas Aquinas Church, at 751 Waverley Street, was founded in 1901, completed in June 1902 and dedicated in November 1903. Wikipedia describes its style as Carpenter Gothic with a Victorian character. It sits at the northern edge of Professorville and moviegoers may recognize it from the 1971 film Harold and Maude.

The parish around it has changed shape. In 1987 St. Thomas Aquinas merged with Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Albert the Great, St. Aloysius and the Newman Center and St. Ann Chapel at Stanford into a single parish. St. Aloysius closed in 1994 and St. Ann Chapel was sold in 1999. The parish today includes St. Thomas Aquinas, Our Lady of the Rosary and St. Albert the Great. Wikipedia calls the Waverley Street church a registered historic landmark. The city's historic inventory, described on our historic homes page, is the place to confirm its local category.

Other early downtown congregations

Several other congregations date from the town's first decades. We could confirm their present addresses but not every founding date:

The Methodist church's sanctuary holds a Speidel organ and a second antiphonal organ. The congregation has offered public tours and short organ concerts. Check each congregation's own site for history pages and visiting information.

The lost Maybeck church

One of the most interesting buildings in early Palo Alto is gone. Unitarians organized in town around 1905 and met in Jordan's Hall for about two years. Then Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck designed them a church at the corner of Cowper Street and Channing Avenue, paid for by Frances A. Hackley of Tarrytown, New York. It was dedicated on March 24, 1907.

A 1907 account described redwood boards and shakes, heavy timbers, cement plaster and a tall chancel arch, with a tower on Cowper Street. The organ came from the First Parish in Scituate, Massachusetts. A north wing for Sunday school was added in 1914. The congregation dissolved in 1934 and the property passed to the American Unitarian Association. From 1952 to 1965 the Palo Alto Art League used it as a gallery and studios before moving to 668 Ramona Street, as our Pacific Art League page explains. The University of Washington's Pacific Coast Architecture Database lists the church as demolished.

Unitarian worship continued in Palo Alto. Jerry Garcia married Sara Ruppenthal at the Unitarian church in Palo Alto on April 25, 1963. Today the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto is at 505 East Charleston Road.

University AME Zion Church

For decades the center of Black life in Palo Alto was University AME Zion Church. The National Trust for Historic Preservation describes it as founded in 1918 and as the oldest continuously operating historically Black church in Silicon Valley. Isaac M. Hinson was among its founders.

In 1925 the congregation built a small stucco church at 819 Ramona Street near Homer Avenue. Members paid off its mortgage by 1939. In 1965 the congregation moved to a new campus at 3549 Middlefield Road and sold the Ramona Street building. When it faced demolition in the late 1980s, Hinson's granddaughter Ruth Anne Gray led a campaign to save it. The developer Menlo Equities restored it as office space in 2009 and members returned for a homecoming service.

In December 2019 vandals spray-painted messages in the church courtyard. Faith leaders from across Palo Alto joined a Solidarity Sunday service there in response. In 2026 the National Trust named the church a grant recipient in its Preserving Black Churches program, for work on its 1965 mid-century modern campus and a 1920s building known as the Little House. Our page on African American history tells the congregation's story in more depth.

Stanford Memorial Church

The grandest church in the area is on campus. Jane Stanford built Memorial Church in memory of her husband and it was dedicated on January 25, 1903, to a design by Charles A. Coolidge. The 1906 earthquake brought down its tower and the 1989 Loma Prieta quake closed it again until its rededication on November 1, 1992. Memorial Church is nondenominational and has five organs, the oldest from 1901. It was closed to visitors for maintenance from June 15 to October 31, 2026, while services continued. See our Memorial Church page and our guide to religious life at Stanford.

Temples, synagogues and later congregations

As Palo Alto grew after World War II, so did the range of its congregations:

• Palo Alto Buddhist Temple. At 2751 Louis Road, it has served the Japanese American community of the Midpeninsula for generations. Its summer Obon festival dates to the late 1940s, the years after families returned from wartime incarceration. See our Obon festival page.
• Congregation Beth Am. A Reform synagogue founded in 1955, at 26790 Arastradero Road in Los Altos Hills, just past the city line.
• The Palo Alto Society of Friends. The local Quaker meeting was active by 1942, when members served refreshments to Japanese American families boarding buses for incarceration. Society of Friends is the historic name. Today the group is Palo Alto Friends Meeting, which worships at 957 Colorado Avenue.
• Chabad of Palo Alto. It has held a public Hanukkah menorah lighting in front of City Hall for about four decades.

Jewish community life also gained a center in 2009, when the Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life, home of the Oshman Family JCC, opened on Fabian Way on the old Sun Microsystems site.

Visiting respectfully

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