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Palo Alto’s Crescent Park neighborhood has drawn national attention in recent years as the place where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has quietly assembled nearly a dozen homes into a sprawling family compound. It also holds the distinction of having the city’s highest median home price, at about $6 million. But long before tech wealth reshaped the local real estate landscape, Crescent Park was conceived as a place of privilege.
A grand-scale development
When Crescent Park debuted in 1924, the meticulously planned subdivision came with rules meant to safeguard both its character and its exclusivity. Homes were required to cost at least $10,000 — about 1.6 times the national average at the time — and lots averaged roughly half an acre. Uses were tightly controlled: Livestock and poultry were prohibited, setbacks were mandated to preserve uniformity and aesthetics, and pricing standards were designed to ensure high-end construction throughout the tract.
Named for its crescent-shaped streets tracing the curve of San Francisquito Creek, the new neighborhood was marketed as one of the Peninsula’s most carefully restricted residential districts.
A Palo Alto Times advertisement published in 1924 framed those restrictions as “home protection.”
“A home built in Crescent Park has the immediate protection of restricted home-building — there is no gamble attached to the purchase of Crescent Park home-sites,” the ad read. “There is no need to worry about how the future will affect your home. … There is but one resultant feature attached to your purchase — and this is the most important — increased valuation!”
The neighborhood promised “comfort and luxury,” touting modern bungalows and two-story homes built to appeal to “the most fastidious.” Promotional materials highlighted large villa sites, fertile soil for landscaping and carefully planned vistas.
By June of its opening year, newspaper reports estimated the subdivision would generate about $500,000 in residential construction. Seventeen high-end homes — many inspired by Spanish, Moorish and English architectural styles — were already under construction, with individual costs approaching $30,000. Place, Brewer & Clark served as general sales managers, and the subdivision plan included more than 2,500 linear feet of sidewalk, an electrolier street-lighting system similar to Palo Alto’s business district and partially undergrounded electrical lines, an uncommon feature at the time, the Peninsula Times Tribune reported in December 1925.
The neighborhood took shape at what were then the city’s edges, roughly bounded by Hamilton Avenue and San Francisquito Creek. The nearby extension of University Avenue further reinforced Crescent Park’s prominence as Palo Alto expanded outward.
Restrictions and exclusion
Like many upscale neighborhoods of its era, Crescent Park was governed by strict deed restrictions that controlled density, building standards and land use. Those deeds also contained racially discriminatory covenants barring non-white residents — a widespread practice in California that was later rendered illegal and formally terminated. While those covenants are now part of the neighborhood’s troubling historical record, they also underscore how Crescent Park was engineered as an exclusive development.
Today, the neighborhood is recognized by its spacious lots and leafy streets. Bordered by San Francisquito Creek, Fulton Street, Edgewood Drive and Channing Avenue, the neighborhood features stately homes, both historic and newly built. Along Southwood and Edgewood drives, houses often sit far back from the street, partially concealed by mature trees and long driveways. On Forest Avenue, planted medians are wide enough for children to play, underscoring the area’s park-like feel.
Homes replace farmland
The neighborhood did not reach its present size overnight. The land was once part of Spanish land grants and later purchased in 1864 by Dr. William Newell, who planted some of the first Australian eucalyptus trees in the United States, shaping the area’s leafy character. The name Crescent Park was adopted in 1920, when Palo Alto annexed much of the former Newell farmland as “Crescent Park 1.” Expansion continued in 1928 with the addition of a 31-acre parcel along San Francisquito Creek, followed by further annexations in the late 1940s to meet postwar housing demand.
Architecture that set a standard
Some of the neighborhood’s most significant residences date to the 1910s and 1920s, when prominent architects helped establish styles that still define the area.
Among the earliest and grandest are homes designed by noted Palo Alto architect Charles K. Sumner, whose work emphasized symmetry, formal layouts and clear separations between public and private spaces. A three-story English manor–style home on the 800 block of Hamilton Avenue, built in 1916, exemplifies that approach with its steep-pitched roof, symmetrical gables and stately scale. Once described in local newspapers as among Palo Alto’s finest residences, the 25-room estate has retained much of its original character and sold for $15.1 million in 2024.
The neighborhood also contains what preservationists consider Palo Alto’s best example of a full-blown Queen Anne home, at 1023 Forest Ave. Known as the “Grande Dame of Crescent Park,” the asymmetrical house features mismatched round towers, elaborate trim and a richly detailed façade.
Much of Crescent Park’s cohesive streetscape, however, reflects the influence of Birge Clark, the celebrated 20th-century architect whose Spanish Colonial Revival designs helped shape Palo Alto. Clark’s homes emphasized indoor-outdoor living through courtyards, cloisters and flowing interior spaces. One of his best-known works in the neighborhood, the Dunker House on Maple Street, built in 1926, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered among the city’s earliest Spanish Colonial Revival homes.
This eclectic mix of architectural styles along Crescent Park’s leafy streets has given the neighborhood a lasting charm, keeping it one of Palo Alto’s most coveted addresses for more than a century, even as it continues to evolve.
Some information taken from “Crescent Park Neighborhood Profile” by Lulu Wijaya previously published in the Palo Alto Weekly’s Neighborhoods magazine.
Correction: The story had initially misstated the name of the newspaper where the 1924 ad appeared.
