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palo alto neighborhood guide · property nerds® at compass
Professorville, Palo Alto Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide
Palo Alto's original faculty neighborhood: about 185 single-family lots of 1890s to 1920s shingle, Colonial Revival and Craftsman houses between Addison Avenue and Embarcadero Road, nearly all in a historic district.
Professorville by the numbers
professorville by the numbers · live from the mls
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Calculated in your browser from MLS data for Professorville: Addison Ave, Cowper St, Embarcadero Rd and Emerson St (city neighborhood outline). Sales are single-family homes, townhomes and condos.
homes in professorville · live from the mls
Homes for sale, for rent and recently sold in Professorville
Every active listing, rental and closed sale in Professorville from the MLS, updated automatically, with a map of the neighborhood outline.
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Listings come from MLSListings and other MLSs through IDX and show their listing brokerage; confirm details with the listing agent. The map outline is the neighborhood boundary used by our listing search (Professorville: Addison Ave, Cowper St, Embarcadero Rd and Emerson St (city neighborhood outline)); it may not match every local definition.
the story
How Professorville came to be
Professorville is about as old as Palo Alto gets. In 1887 Timothy Hopkins, at Leland Stanford's urging, bought 697 acres of the Seale ranch and 40 acres of Greer land for a university town; the subdivision map was recorded in 1889 and the town, first called University Park, soon took the Palo Alto name and incorporated in 1894. The National Park Service record says land here was subdivided in 1889 for Stanford professors who wanted to own their home sites rather than lease university land. Stanford opened in 1891, and faculty built steadily on these blocks across the Southern Pacific tracks from campus through the 1890s and early 1900s. The name followed.
The newcomers brought house ideas from the East and Midwest. The city's design guidelines trace the look to the Shingle, Arts and Crafts and Colonial Revival styles and the Bay Area's First Bay Tradition: wood-shingle walls, asymmetrical fronts, gambrel roofs, and classical columns and dentils. Bernard Maybeck designed a house at Lincoln Avenue and Bryant Street, and when it burned he designed its replacement, the Sunbonnet House. Arthur B. Clark designed 433 Melville Avenue for one of Stanford's founding professors, and 450 Kingsley Avenue, a three-story, 14-room house with a Queen Anne corner tower and a Palladian window, was built for the university's first physics professor. By the 1920s the neighborhood was largely built out. George Washington Smith's Pettigrew House on Cowper Street was one of Palo Alto's first two Spanish-style houses, and Birge Clark added Kingsley Court, a loop of 10 cottages, in 1940.
By mid-century many of the big houses had been converted to shared rental housing. Preservation took hold in the 1970s and 1980s. The district was nominated to the National Register in 1979 and listed on October 3, 1980, with 105 contributing residences; the City Council added it to the city's Historic Inventory in 1979 and expanded the local district toward Embarcadero Road in 1993. In 2016 the city adopted Professorville Historic District Design Guidelines, prepared by Page & Turnbull, which apply to every property in the local district.
streets and homes
The streets and the houses
Professorville is a plain grid. Emerson, Ramona, Bryant, Waverley and Cowper streets run northwest to southeast; Addison, Lincoln, Kingsley and Melville avenues cross them, and Embarcadero Road closes the southeast side. City parcel data counts 185 single-family parcels inside the neighborhood lines, the most on Kingsley Avenue (29), Waverley Street (28), Bryant Street (26) and Ramona Street (24). Every one is zoned single-family: R-1(10000), with its larger minimum lot size, on 107 parcels and R-1 on 78.
There are really two lot patterns. The guidelines describe the western half, toward Emerson Street, as the oldest and most tightly spaced, with many lots 50 to 75 feet wide and rear alleys where garages and carriage barns open straight onto the lane. Larger lots sit north and east of Waverley Street, some of them early estates later subdivided, which explains the occasional flag lot and newer house tucked between old ones. The median single-family lot is about 7,900 square feet, the middle half run from about 5,750 to 10,800, and 54 lots are 10,000 square feet or more. Early houses sit 25 to 40 feet back behind flat lawns, low picket fences or hedges, and stand one and a half to two and a half stories.
The records show how little has turned over. The median recorded year built is 1911, 131 of 181 dated parcels were built before 1930, and only 14 record a year built of 2000 or later. Sixty-four parcels also carry their own Category 1 to 4 listing in the city's Historic Inventory, three of them Category 1. So most projects here are rehabilitations, rear additions and carefully placed second stories, not teardowns. The guidelines say a historic building should not be demolished unless rehabilitation is infeasible, worn features should be repaired before they are replaced, and new houses should be compatible in style, materials and scale.
streets in professorville
- Addison Avenue
- Lincoln Avenue
- Kingsley Avenue
- Melville Avenue
- Embarcadero Road
- Emerson Street
- Ramona Street
- Bryant Street
- Waverley Street
- Cowper Street
- Whitman Court
parks and places
Parks, shops and landmarks near Professorville
- landmark
Sunbonnet House, 1061 Bryant Street
Bernard Maybeck's replacement for an earlier house he designed on the Lincoln and Bryant corner, which burned. The city's inventory lists it as a Category 2 building.
- landmark
Pettigrew House, 1336 Cowper Street
George Washington Smith's Spanish-style house, listed on the National Register on November 25, 1980, and one of the first two Spanish-style houses built in Palo Alto.
- landmark
HP Garage, 367 Addison Avenue
Just across Addison Avenue, the Hewlett-Packard House and Garage, where William Hewlett and David Packard worked together from 1938 to 1940, is on the National Register (2007) and is a California Historical Landmark.
- bike
Bryant Street bike boulevard
Named for Ellen Fletcher, it runs from Palo Alto Avenue to East Meadow Drive straight through Professorville. The city calls it the first bicycle boulevard implemented in the United States, in the 1970s.
- park
Heritage Park, 300 Homer Avenue
A 2.01-acre park about three blocks north, with a sentinel redwood, a coast live oak moved from 819 Ramona Street, a playground and picnic tables. It opened March 12, 2006, on land from the old Palo Alto Medical Foundation campus.
- park
Bowling Green Park, 474 Embarcadero Road
Across Embarcadero Road: a 2-acre park with a lawn bowling green built by the Civil Works Administration in 1933 and 1934 and opened March 10, 1935, on the site of the 1910 Peninsula Hospital.
- shopping
University Avenue, downtown
Downtown's main street is about half a mile north of Addison Avenue, roughly a 10-minute walk (approximate).
schools and commute
School districts and getting around
School districts
Professorville is served by the Palo Alto Unified School District. No public school sits inside the neighborhood lines. Addison Elementary (650 Addison Avenue) is a block or two northeast of Cowper Street, Walter Hays Elementary is at 1525 Middlefield Road near Embarcadero Road, and Palo Alto High School is at 50 Embarcadero Road on the far side of Alma Street and the Caltrain tracks. PAUSD assigns schools by address and attendance boundaries change, so check the exact address with the district.
Getting around
- Palo Alto Caltrain station (95 University Avenue) is about 0.5 to 1 mile from Professorville in a straight line. The Palo Alto Transit Center beside it is served by VTA Route 21 and SamTrans Route 281, among others.
- California Avenue Caltrain is roughly 0.9 to 1.2 miles south (straight line).
- The Bryant Street bike boulevard runs through the middle of the neighborhood, from Palo Alto Avenue to East Meadow Drive.
- Embarcadero Road is the cross-town connector: west under the tracks to El Camino Real and Stanford, east to US-101, roughly 2 miles away (approximate).
- Alma Street (along the tracks) and Middlefield Road are the parallel arterials on either side of the neighborhood.
nerd notes
Buying or selling in Professorville: what we check
Buying here
- Check the parcel's status first: whether it is in the local historic district, whether the house is a contributor, and whether it has its own Category 1 to 4 listing. The city's parcel report shows this, and the 2016 Professorville guidelines apply to every property in the local district.
- Plan additions around two reviews. A new two-story house or a second-floor addition of 150 square feet or more must meet the city's two-story objective design standards (adopted February 2025) or go through Single Family Individual Review, and exterior work on historic properties can also go to the Historic Resources Board.
- SB 9 is parcel-specific here. Since AB 1061 took effect January 1, 2026, the state's historic exclusion turns on the parcel, and lots with a contributing structure in a local historic district are generally still excluded. Ask Planning before you price a lot split or second unit; ADU rules are separate.
- Inspect it like a 120-year-old house: foundation type, original wiring and plumbing, the sewer lateral, and the condition of shingles and wood windows, which the guidelines would have you repair rather than replace where you can.
- The redwoods and oaks here predate the town and are protected: coast live and valley oaks from 11.5 inches in diameter, coast redwoods from 18 inches, most other mature trees from 15 inches (ordinance in effect May 1, 2024). Removal needs a permit, and a project may need a tree protection plan.
Selling here
- Pull the paper trail before you list: inventory category, district status, past Historic Resources Board or Individual Review approvals and finaled permits. Buyers here ask early.
- Document original fabric and restoration work (shingles, windows, porches, built-ins) and say what was repaired versus replaced; the guidelines treat those differently.
- Lot facts matter: get a survey and show frontage, alley access, any flag-lot configuration and R-1 or R-1(10000) zoning, since buyers will weigh expansion room against the guidelines.
- For an early-1900s house, pre-listing inspections (foundation, sewer lateral, electrical) and clear disclosure of any unpermitted work save renegotiation later.
nerd noteCommissions are always negotiable, and we offer bundled services, so ask us what's included.
faq
Professorville questions, answered
Why is it called Professorville?
In 1889 land here was subdivided for Stanford faculty who wanted to own their home sites instead of leasing university land. Stanford opened in 1891 and professors built through the 1890s and early 1900s, so the neighborhood took their name.
Is all of Professorville a historic district?
Nearly. The National Register district (1980) covers 34.4 acres. The city's local district, expanded in 1993, covers about 65 acres and 186 residential parcels. City records tag 164 of the 185 single-family parcels inside the neighborhood lines as Professorville, plus about 30 parcels just across Emerson, Cowper and Addison.
Can I tear down a house and build new in Professorville?
It is hard to do with a historic building. The guidelines say one should not be demolished unless rehabilitation is infeasible, and new houses should be compatible in style, materials and scale. Additions and second stories are more common, and they go through the city's two-story standards or Individual Review and, for historic properties, Historic Resources Board review.
Which school district serves Professorville?
The Palo Alto Unified School District. Schools are assigned by address and boundaries change, so confirm any address with PAUSD.
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