746 Santa Ynez Street, Stanford, CA 94305

746 Santa Ynez Street is one of the most historically significant private residences in Stanford's San Juan Hill neighborhood — and one of the least known, sitting below street level behind a dense screen of mature trees, invisible to passersby on the street above. The house was designed in 1917 by Charles K. Sumner of San Francisco, the architect of record, whose original drawings are dated August 29, 1917, in a Mediterranean style with French influences. (The property appears in Stanford's Birge Clark architectural collection due to a 1941 kitchen remodel by Malcolm Clark, Birge's son; the confusion is understandable but the authorship is Sumner's.) It was commissioned by Albert Conser Whitaker, a Stanford professor of economics, who ran out of funds before completion. Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover purchased the unfinished house and upgraded it substantially while their own house on the crown of San Juan Hill was under construction. It was Lou Henry Hoover who lived in and...