Palo Alto Medical Clinic, also known as the Roth Building (structure built in 1932) was a former medical clinic. The building is located at 300 Homer street, at the corner of Bryant street 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 ...

. It is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places listings in Santa Clara County, California __NOTOC__ This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Latitude and longitude coordinates are provided for many National Regi ...

since 2010. The building is a good example of

Spanish Colonial Revival architecture 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 th ...

, and has historical relevance for the Palo Alto community, art history, and medical history.

History

Medical clinic

In 1924, Dr. Russell Van Arsdale Lee (1895–1982) went into medical practice with Dr. Thomas Williams at an office located at Bryant Street at Hamilton Street in Palo Alto. However the medical clinic grew quickly and they decided to partner with a team of new doctors and move the clinic to a larger space. As a result, the Palo Alto Medical Clinic was founded in 1930 by Russell V. Lee, and five other doctors. The early doctors and founding partners to form the clinic included Edward "Fritz" Roth, Blake Colburn Wilbur, Herbert Niebel, Milton Saier, and Esther Bridgman Clark. In 1927,

pediatrician Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the ...

Esther Bridgman Clark became a founding partner of the clinic, she was one of the first female doctors on the San Francisco Peninsula, and she went on to later found the Children's Health Council of Palo Alto. Palo Alto Medical Clinic was an early place for innovations in medicine, they pioneered the model of group practice, and was a predecessor to the

Palo Alto Medical Foundation The Palo Alto Medical Foundation for Health Care, Research, and Education (PAMF) is a not-for-profit health care organization with medical offices in more than 15 cities in the Bay Area. It has more than 900 physicians and had over 2 million patie ...

Building and architecture

The Palo Alto Medical Clinic building was designed by Esther Bridgman Clark's brother, local 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 ...

and the builder was Wells P. Goodenough. Clark was known for his Spanish Colonial Revival architecture style. The structure was built in 1932. The building is in a U-shape, and built of concrete, stucco and features clay roof tiles and a second floor rustic wood balcony. Below the balcony is an arched

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

which defined a loggia and a courtyard entrance.

Arnautoff murals

In 1932, Russell V. Lee commissioned artist

Victor Arnautoff Victor Mikhail Arnautoff (born Uspenovka, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire, November 11, 1896 – died Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, March 22, 1979) was a Russian-American painter and professor of art. He worked in San Francisco and ...

to paint a series of fresco paintings around the entrance of the building. Arnautoff's mural series all were medically-themed murals done in the recessed under a

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

with four panels of modern medicine and other panels showing primitive medicine, and additionally he four painted medallions of

Joseph Lister Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, (5 April 182710 February 1912) was a British surgeon, medical scientist, experimental pathologist and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative medicine. Joseph Lister revolutionised the craft of s ...

Hippocrates Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of ...

Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur (, ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization, the latter of which was named afte ...

, and

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; ; 27 March 184510 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achiev ...

are on the exterior wall of the loggia. The four murals done in color feature modern medicine and depict

Luther Emmett Holt Luther Emmett Holt (L. Emmett Holt, March 4, 1855 – January 14, 1924) was an American pediatrician and author, noted for writing ''The Care and Feeding of Children: A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses'' in 1894. Born near ...

William Osler Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet, (; July 12, 1849 – December 29, 1919) was a Canadian physician and one of the "Big Four" founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first Residency (medicine), residency program for spec ...

, and

Harvey Cushing Harvey Williams Cushing (April 8, 1869 – October 7, 1939) was an American neurosurgeon, pathologist, writer, and draftsman. A pioneer of brain surgery, he was the first exclusive neurosurgeon and the first person to describe Cushing's disease. ...

. The unveiling of these murals caused a traffic jam and some controversy, in part because one of the murals showed a doctor examining a female patient whose bare breasts were at eye-level.

Modern-day

In 2000, the city of Palo Alto bought the building with the intention of restoration and eventually becoming the home of the Palo Alto History Museum and Palo Alto's historical archives. However the renovations have been delayed due to a lack of funds and a reduced priority by the city budget.

References

External links

{{Authority control 1930s architecture in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Santa Clara County, California Buildings and structures in Palo Alto, California Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California