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Edwin Gamble (d. 1939), an heir to the Proctor and Gamble soap fortune, moved his family from KY to the new town of Palo Alto, CA, in 1902. In Northern CA, Edwin and Elizabeth L. Gamble (d. 1927) raised four children in this three-story house, designed in 1901 and completed in 1902. All the Gamble children attended Stanford University. (Another Gamble, David Berry Gamble, retired from the soap business in 1895 and moved from Cincinnati, OH, to Pasadena, CA, in 1907. He built the famous Gamble House designed by Charles Sumner and Henry Mather Greene in 1908-1909.) The Palo Alto family bought a 2.3 acre property and erected a large 5,450 square foot dwelling and carriage house (another 1,075 square feet). At this time, the Gambles lived on the fringes of Palo Alto which rapidly grew up around them. Although they could have afforded a larger and showier home, the Gamble spent $$6,039, a relatively modest amount for the time. A daughter, Elizabeth F. Gamble, attended Stanford and Wellesley College, and returned to live in the family residence which she eventually inherited in 1939. Elizabeth Gamble spent years developing her garden, which she opened frequently to the Palo Alto Garden Club and the public. Civically minded, she willed the residence and garden to the City of Palo Alto in 1971, with the proviso that she be allowed to live in it until her death. She died in 1981, and plans were made to raze the house. Preservationists fought to save the original ensemble, and won, lobbying the city to open the The Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden Center in 1985.

Tel: (650) 329-1356

Elizabeth F. Gamble commissioned Palo Alto architect Charles Kaiser Sumner (1874-1948, nee Charles Sumner Kaiser, he changed his name during anti-German agitation during World War I) to make additions to the north and south elevations; Sumner also appended a tool shed onto the existing carriage house. Landscape designer, Allan Himes Reid, completed a teahouse on the Gamble property in 1948. Palo Alto architect Leslie I. Nichols (1894-1969) altered the house's front porch in 1953.

PCAD id: 16676