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Nestled in a woodsy thicket on Stanford University’s historic San Juan Hill lies a charming house built for a professor in 1905. Once Shingle-style, and strongly influenced by architect A. B. Clark’s work on the William F. Durand home next door, the house was rebuilt after a fire in 1939.
Now the home of Gail Lapidus — senior fellow emerita at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and professor emerita of political science at the University of California, Berkeley — will be open to the public on Sunday, April 27, as part of the Stanford Historic House and Garden Tour.
Visitors can see the family room, added on in 1939, which served as the study/library of Lapidus’ late husband, Alexander Dallin. It’s easy to imagine the Russian and Soviet historian in the redwood-paneled, octagonal room with a cone-shaped roof, looking out the leaded-glass windows at the surrounding trees.
Both Lapidus and Dallin were avid gardeners and international travelers, and their home is filled with items acquired abroad — from the copper sculpture from Georgia and Indonesian carved processional on the dining-room walls to the colorful Portuguese tiles now embedded in the exterior stucco.
Through the years the home has been extensively but subtly remodeled, leaving the original oak floors, pointed arches in doors and many of the leaded-glass window panes.
In 1991, a master bedroom wing was enlarged, stepping down to a bedroom and sitting bay overlooking more greenery. Lapidus credits Moyer Associates of Palo Alto with enlarging the space seamlessly — from the outside one has no idea a new area was added on.
“They were thoughtful about integrating the new and old,” she said.
“We dropped the level so we’d have higher ceilings,” she said, pointing to the built-in dresser that avoided running the steps across the room. The circular bay echoes the shape of the paneled study, as wood strips in the top windows are reminiscent of the older leaded-glass versions there.
A bay window extends over the new tub, which “makes the addition more harmonious with the older part of the house,” Lapidus said.
The latest updating was to the kitchen, where dark cabinets were replaced with painted white ones, and golden granite covers the countertops.
“We preserved most of the footprint,” she said, noting that earlier a bay window had been added. They worked with contractor Ron Zolezzi of Menlo Park.
A lot of energy went into choosing just the right granite.
“I like the warm colors, combined with the yellow walls and light wood floor. It makes it feel light and airy,” Lapidus said.
Outside, the couple enlarged the deck, added a garage and restored an old carriage house, which is now a rental unit.
When it came to designing their garden, they mostly relied on themselves and ideas gleaned from their travels, such as planting salmon-colored rhododendrons.
“We were real novices when we started. We put shade plants in the sun and sun plants in the shade,” Lapidus said. What they thought were dwarf orange trees, similar to ones they’d seen in Spain, soon dwarfed the rest of the garden.
“They became monsters,” she laughed.
Not everything came from halfway around the world; some of their favorite garden touches, including a wrought-iron wishing well, were purchased at Luciano’s in Carmel. And after Dallin’s death in 2000, Lapidus had “Alex’s bench” made, carved with his favorite hummingbirds.
Three other homes from one of San Juan Hill’s first subdivision will be on tour, including:
• A 1914 Tudor, designed by architect A.B. Clark and owner Olive McFarland, with Craftsman details, which is on the National Register of Historic Places;
• A 1925 Mediterranean Period Style, designed by Charles Kaiser Sumner with his signature arches, asymmetry and repeated elements;
• A 1908 Shingle-style, possibly designed by Bernard Maybeck, transformed in the mid-1960s to a New England Farmhouse. Much has been restored, with features from the original plans.
The four homes will be included either in “Historic Houses V,” which will be published in spring 2009, or “Historic Houses I: Historic Houses of San Juan Hill,” which is available through the Stanford Historical Society’s Web site, http://histsoc.stanford.edu/hh1.shtml . Last year the Historic Houses Project, which includes the house tours, won the Governor’s Historic Preservation Award.
What: Stanford Historic House and Garden Tour
When: Sunday, April 27, 1 to 4 p.m.
Where: Four houses within walking distance on Stanford campus
Parking: Park at Tresidder Union parking lot, pick up shuttle in front of Stanford Faculty Club across from lot.
Tickets: $20, if purchased by April 18; $25 after. Mail check (payable to Stanford Historical Society) c/o Sweeney, P.O. Box 19290, Stanford, CA 94309. Tickets will be distributed on day of tour at corner of Cabrillo Avenue and Santa Ynez Street.
Info: Call 650-725-3332 or 650-324-1653, visit http://histsoc.stanford.edu/ or e-mail questions to cglasser@stanford.edu or susan.sweeney@stanford.edu.
Footwear: Some of the houses have uneven paths and stairs without railings.
