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Building History

Restaurateur and hotel owner John Herman Rickey (1896-1985) commissioned the construction of this motel/hotel on a five-acre property located on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, CA.

Building Notes

The high-rise addition to Rickey's Studio Club of 1956-1957 won and award citation from Progressive Architecture magazine in 01/1958. (See "P/A Fifth Annual Design Awards Program Residential: Award Citations," Progressive Architecture, vol. 39, no. 1, 01/1958, p. 87.)

Alteration

A high-rise addition was made in 1956-1957. Progressive Architecture said of this addition in 1958: "The need here was for an addition of about 60 rental units to the highly successful Rickey's Studio Inn (September 1954 P/A), which had grown from an original 52 units, in 1954, to 143, in 1957--all organized in semi-rustic, redwood, one-story buildings disposed around lawns, garden courts, and pools. To provide the desired number of new suites on limited, remaining land, a multistory, reinforced-concrete building with 11 rooms on each of the upper 5 floors, and 9 on the first floor, proved the solution. Trellis-screened, single-loaded corridors on the northeast serve the southwest-facing suites. Glazing and redwood brise-soleils occur on the building line, bordering lounging balconies; an inner curtain may be drawn between balcony and bedroom. To cope with a local height-limit regulation, the hotel is sited in a sunken garden and pool; entrance is by means of footbridges. To maintain some of the texture and color of the existing group, corridor walls will be lined with redwood boards and battens; exposed concrete end walls, to be cast with batten-lined forms, will be painted redwood color. Outdoor hydraulic elevators, with metal-and-glass-enclosed cabs, will offer guests a diverting method of traveling vertically." (See "P/A Fifth Annual Design Awards Program Residential: Award Citations," Progressive Architecture, vol. 39, no. 1, 01/1958, p. 87.)

The design team for this 1956-1957 addition included the firms of Ernest J. Kump, Jr., Architect; Douglas Baylis, Landscape Architect; Hall, Pregnoff and Matheu, Structural Engineers; Smith and Garthorne, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers; and Kosta Belotelkin, Mechanical Engineer. Charles Rinne was the project engineer for Hall, Pregnoff and Matheu.

Demolition

The Rickey's Hyatt was torn down.

PCAD id: 1617