More Stately Homes of Stanford

Classic Good Looks
Dunn-Bacon House, 565 Mayfield Avenue (1899)
Recently restored 3,500-square foot Neoclassical, wood-paneled library

With its columned portico and curving driveway, this house could serve as a stand-in for Tara in Gone with the Wind. Its first owners were Harriet Dunn, a San Francisco friend of Jane Stanford who operated a boarding house for young faculty on what is now White Plaza, and her husband, Orrin, a West Coast representative for the Bissell Carpet Sweeper Co. Later it passed down to her cousin, mathematics professor Harold M. Bacon '28, MA '29, PhD '33, and his wife, Ros '30, MA '32, a co-founder of the Stanford Historical Society. One of the house's most endearing quirks is a secret stairway, hidden from the living room by a sliding wood panel, where Mrs. Dunn reportedly would escape to freshen up before opening the door to unexpected guests.

When Ros Bacon moved to an assisted living facility in 1997, Stanford bought the house and began looking for a tenant that might help fund needed repairs. Enter Stanford Hillel, the umbrella organization for Jewish student groups on campus, which had outgrown its quarters in the basement of the Old Union Clubhouse.

Thanks to $4.5 million in donations for the 50-year lease, restoration and endowment, the graceful old home has a new lease on life and a new name: the Harold and Libby Ziff Center for Jewish Life. “We feel so lucky to be here,” says Hillel executive director Adina Danzig, who oversees the house's busy calendar of Shabbat dinners, concerts and lectures. “It's amazing to be in a historic place that has such a wonderful homelike quality.”

English-born George B. Cooksey and his wife, Linda Dows Cooksey, were Eastern friends of Jane and Leland Stanford. When Mrs. Cooksey's health began to decline, Jane suggested that a home in sunny California might be just the thing to boost her friend's spirits. Designed by University architect Charles Hodges, this home was built large enough to accommodate the Cookseys' five children plus seven servants, including a trained nurse, cook and butler.

Unfortunately, within three years, Mrs. Cooksey was dead, and her grieving husband offered to donate the new house to the University as a student infirmary. Apparently, Jane Stanford didn't like the idea. As campus physician Ray Lyman Wilbur, Class of 1896, MA '97, MD '99, later explained, “Mrs. Stanford . . . thought the presence of a hospital on a hill would lead people to think Stanford might be an unhealthful place.” After Jane's death in 1905, trustees sold the house to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, which used it more or less continuously until 1989, when two of its chimneys collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Campus planners briefly considered razing the structure, but after vigorous lobbying by preservationists, the house was strengthened and restored.

Today it's home to Stanford's 50-student vegetarian co-op, Synergy. “We love the great big open ground floor,” house manager Chris Proctor, '06 says of the funky residence, which sports a peace banner near its side entrance and an organic vegetable garden out back. “In the winter, you can often find people reading and playing board games around the fire.”

People driving near this stately faculty residence on Gerona Road often stop to do a double-take. The graceful house—which would look at home in a Paris suburb—strongly reflects the Gallic heritage of its builder, Stanford literature professor Albert Leon Guérard, who was born in Paris in 1880 and came to the United States in 1906. Albert's gregarious wife, Mamina, was determined to create a Farm version of an 18th-century French salon. On the foyer table, she kept of bust of Voltaire that she decorated for special events. In the living room, a wall mural evoked an idyllic French landscape. Among the house's most illustrious tenants was David Packard, '34, Engr '39, who lived in the Guérards' attic as a student and chose to do housework rather than pay rent. (Mamina reportedly supervised the future high-tech pioneer as he polished her hardwood floors, pointing out spots that he had missed.) Guérard died in the house in 1959; his son, English professor Albert Joseph Guérard, '34, PhD '38, died in the same room in 2000.