Gamble Garden
In 1901, Edwin Percy Gamble, son of the co-founder of Procter & Gamble Co., visited Palo Alto when his eldest son was a student at Stanford University. One year later, he moved his family from Kentucky to Palo Alto. Construction of the Gamble House began in 1902 on land that was at the time outside the city limits. The 5400 square foot house was most likely built from plans purchased from a catalog. Walter A. Hoff designed the formal gardens in 1908. Elizabeth Frances Gamble, Edwin’s only daughter, left the house and garden to the City of Palo Alto at her death in 1981. Miss Gamble’s gift to the city set off heated debates about the future of the eighty year old property that had fallen into disrepair over the years.
The Garden Club of Palo Alto stepped up to lead a campaign to restore and maintain the garden and buildings as a public horticultural center. At the same time, various factions in the community pushed for different uses, such as: raising the property, adding it to the lawn bowling green, making it an artist’s studio, developing it as a teen center or senior center and even converting it to low-income housing.
The Garden Club took their efforts to the next level and created a Founding Board of Directors that was charged with putting together a comprehensive proposal. A major fund-raising effort was launched in an attempt to glean community-wide support. Before making its decision, the Palo Alto City Council entertained extensive public discussion and sifted through almost seventy requests to address the council regarding this matter. On May 13, 1985, with the City Council Chambers overflowing with Gamble Garden supporters wearing flowers, the final vote was taken at midnight. The almost unanimous vote resulted in a proposal to create a community horticultural center.
Today, Gamble Garden is open to the public every day for enjoyment and learning. It is sustained and maintained by a small paid staff and a long roster of volunteers who work tens of thousands of hours every year. For its financial support Gamble Garden relies, as it has from the beginning, completely on private funding.
The Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club
The Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club shares the entire block bordered by Embarcadero, Waverley, Churchill and Cowper with Gamble Garden. This land was originally owned by Thomas Seale, who sold the property to Edwin P. Gamble, the youngest son of James Gamble, co-founder of Procter & Gamble. The Gamble house (now the home of Gamble Garden) was built in 1902 just outside the city limits.
In the early 1900‘s Gamble donated half of his land to be used for a hospital when Palo Alto’s only hospital at the corner of Lytton and Cowper proved too small for the growing population. In 1910 Peninsula Hospital, a three-story building, was built on the current site of the bowling green. In 1931, when an even larger hospital was needed, Hoover Pavilion was built on Stanford land and the old hospital was demolished leaving nothing behind but an empty lot.
The future of the old hospital site was debated at City Council meetings. Once again, various stakeholders in the community pushed their individual agendas. It was suggested that the land be used for a library, a park or a memorial building. In the end, it was decided that the property would be used as a lawn bowling club.
Mrs. Ginny Arnott, originally from Virginia, was elected as the first president of the organization and thirty-three charter members were signed at a membership fee of $5 a year. John McLaren, Superintendent of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, helped with the planning. The construction of the Club was done by Depression Era Civil Works Administration laborers. The opening day for the Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club was March 10, 1935.
In 2008 the Club celebrated its 75th anniversary. The bowling green and clubhouse are maintained via a joint relationship with the City of Palo Alto Parks and Recreation department along with a large group of volunteers. Everyone is welcome to visit, all you need is a pair of flat-soled shoes!
The Winter Lodge
Ice skating in Palo Alto began in 1956 when an engineering professor from San Jose State, Duncan Williams, began experimenting with how to freeze an ice rink in milder weather. Using a refrigerant system with a brine solution in the pipes, Williams who was originally from Wisconsin, managed to create a functioning outdoor rink in Palo Alto. On February 5, 1956, The Winter Club opened in a largely undeveloped stretch of land along Middlefield Road. It was immediately popular, appealing to the many non-native Palo Altans who had childhood memories of skating at rinks back east. By 1959 the rink was operating on 500 family memberships, which was peak capacity. In the ’60’s and 70’s the rink consistently turned a profit.
In 1981, Williams announced that he would be retiring in 1983. The owner of the land, Richard Perry, intended to knock down the ice rink and put up condos. It was then that a small group of ice skating enthusiasts founded the non-profit, Friends of the Winter Club. The initial plan was to build a new rink at Greer Park, but residents of West Bayshore strongly contested that plan. The group then directed their efforts toward another city-owned parcel near Geng Road, just west of the Palo Alto Golf Course. Unfortunately, the Friends of the Winter Club could not raise the funds necessary to build a new pavilion.
In the end, this determined group of Palo Altans solicited the help of the YMCA to run the rink and convinced landowner Perry to give them a one-year extension on the lease. They even persuaded the City Council to give them $25,000 for repairs. In September 1983, the rink opened for the first time in 27 years without Duncan Williams and under a new name, The Winter Lodge. At the end of the 1984 season the “Trust for Community Skating” was trying to figure out how to come up with the whopping $2.5 million needed to purchase the Lodge from Perry. After many failed attempts, they came up with a solid plan. If the City would swap the land near the golf course (the Geng Road parcel) for the Winter Lodge plot, Perry would get his land to develop and the Lodge could stay on Middlefield.
This maneuver required two ballot initiatives in the November 1985 election. One to allow the City to make such a trade and the other to change the Geng Road parcel to non-park use. Both Measure A and Measure B were overwhelmingly approved by the voters. Today, the Winter Lodge is the only permanent outdoor ice rink west of the Sierras has one of the largest skating schools in the country. It has been operationally funded for the last thirty-three years.
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