Stanford Historical Society wins governor's historic preservation award

On Friday, Nov. 9, the California Department of Parks and Recreation's Office of Historic Preservation will announce that the Stanford Historical Society's historic houses committee is receiving a 2007 Governor's Historic Preservation Award—the state's only official award for outstanding efforts in the field of historic preservation.

The committee is being honored for its "Historic Houses Project of Faculty Houses on the Stanford University Campus," an ongoing effort involving not only research but the publication of two booklets by the historical society and fundraising events that promoted the importance of historical preservation by way of open-house tours that allowed hundreds of members of the campus community and surrounding area to essentially walk through time.

The award recognizes efforts in various categories, and the committee is being honored specifically for its work in the fields of "interpretation of historic properties" and "historical research." The group's focus has been on faculty houses built between 1892 and 1930, with the two most recent volumes of the Stanford Historical Society's series of books on homes in the San Juan neighborhood debuting in 2005 and 2007.

"All of us who work on the Historic Houses Project at Stanford are delighted by the recognition afforded by the award," said Marian Leib Adams, co-chair of the historic houses committee. "Recording, preserving and sharing Stanford's history is a central goal of the Stanford Historical Society, and telling the story of the earliest faculty housing on campus is an important part of our mission."

Historic Houses III: San Juan Neighborhood, Stanford University and Historic Houses IV: Early Residential Communities of the Lower San Juan District are available at the Stanford Bookstore and the Cantor Arts Center gift shop for $19.95, plus tax, and all volumes may be purchased online via the historical society's website at http://histsoc.stanford.edu/hhouses.shtml. A fifth volume is now in the research and writing phase, according to Therese Baker-Degler, co-chair of the historic houses committee.

The group's most recent house tour, in April 2007, was held in advance of National Preservation Month (in May) and attracted 400 to 500 walkers. That tour showcased six historic homes and gardens, including four double houses designed by Bakewell & Brown and built by the university in 1908 and 1909. The other two were Tudor-style houses.

Winners of the 2007 Governor's Historic Preservation Awards will be announced at the next quarterly meeting of the State Historical Resources Commission, which is scheduled for Nov. 9 in Palm Springs. Later this month, awards will be presented at a ceremony in Sacramento at the Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park.

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