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Published on 08/18/1999 All articles from this issue

Early Los Altos homes on city's historic inventory

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Voice of the Past

Today, at our just-get-there pace, San Antonio Road is a busy, four-lane thoroughfare. Horse and buggy travelers, however, encountered a different scene. At the turn of the century, San Antonio was a two-lane country dirt road, beginning at El Camino Real and ending at Fremont Avenue (today's Foothill Expressway).

Despite the town's historical beginning with the arrival of passenger trains, 13 homes already existed in Los Altos before the first train pulled into the makeshift boxcar station in 1908.

First farmhouses along San Antonio would have been visible to passers-by only when the frontage orchard trees shed their leaves in autumn. Those that still exist are still hidden, but by construction rather than orchards. The early houses that were not farmhouses tended to be built closer to San Antonio Road.

Most of these early houses have retained enough of their original architectural integrity to be placed on the city's inventory of historical places. Because they are privately owned, the public is naturally not free to walk around and explore. However, almost all of the houses can now be viewed from their modern street addresses.

A local landmark, the large Adams House on Pepper Drive, was being framed at the time of the 1906 earthquake. It was one of the earliest houses built on the east side of San Antonio Road. When it was completed, it was the centerpiece of Marvin O. Adams' 30-acre ranch. The driveway out to the road was lined with pepper trees, which gave the drive its subsequent name, Pepper Drive.

The foreman of the Adams Ranch lived nearby in a house still standing on Marvin Avenue (named for Marvin O. Adams Jr.). During WWII, Adams House became apartments for military residents.

Among early homes, one on Angela Drive was built in an Italian Renaissance style in 1922, by and for Andrew Knoll, a San Francisco architect. It has the square tower typical of an Italian villa.

Similar Italian-style architecture marks a house on Almendra Court, built around 1912 by Judge Myers. It was for many years a popular meeting place for young people. Between 1960 and 1985 it housed the Happy Hour Nursery School.

"It was really spectacular in the springtime. People used to come down from San Francisco to see it." This was Arah Love's girlhood memory of the hawthorn trees lining her home's driveway. This house was built by J. Gilbert Smith (whose own farmhouse is now the History House Museum of Los Altos). Mr. Lenox and his bride hired Smith as a carpenter in 1907, while he was waiting for his own orchard trees to mature. Arah's father, James Manning, bought the house from Lenox when Arah was a little girl. In later years, Arah Love ran the Wooden Shoe Preschool on the property.

- Compiled by Don McDonald, courtesy of Los Altos History House Association.