The Norris House is a historic house located at 1247 Cowper St. in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The house was built in 1927 for

Kathleen Norris Kathleen Thompson Norris (July 16, 1880 – January 18, 1966) was an American novelist and newspaper columnist. She was one of the most widely read and highest paid female writers in the United States for nearly fifty years, from 1911 to 1959. N ...

, a novelist and columnist who was once the highest-paid female author in the United States, and her husband

Charles Gilman Norris Charles Gilman Norris (April 23, 1881 – July 25, 1945) was an American novelist. A native of Chicago, Norris worked as a journalist for some years before finding success as a novelist and playwright. His first book was ''The Amateur'' (1916). ...

, also a noted novelist. Kathleen Norris' novels featured female characters who represented her ideals of motherhood and moral virtue; her columns appeared in major magazines and included both short stories and advice columns. Charles Gilman Norris wrote novels which touched on contemporary social issues and served as Kathleen's agent. In 1949, the Diocese of San Francisco purchased the house to serve as the Newman Center for Stanford University. Around 2000 the house was sold into private hands again. Architect

Birge Clark Birge Malcolm Clark (April 16, 1893 – April 30, 1989) was an American architect, called “Palo Alto's best-loved architect” by the Palo Alto Weekly; he worked largely in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Biography Early life Clark was bor ...

designed the

Spanish Colonial Revival The Spanish Colonial Revival Style ( es, Arquitectura neocolonial española) is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In the ...

house. At the time, the house was Clark's largest and most expensive design. The house's layout features several one- and two-story sections surrounding a patio. The house is built from white

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

with a tile roof; handcrafted ironwork and woodwork is used in the beams and decorations. The house was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on July 24, 1980.

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in California Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California Houses completed in 1927 Houses in Palo Alto, California National Register of Historic Places in Santa Clara County, California {{SantaClaraCountyCA-NRHP-stub