Stanford University

 

For a visit that was planned in a very impromptu way (we were sitting on the train deciding where to get off) this has been one of our most interesting so far.  Pat said that visiting Stanford University should be recommended to anyone who comes to San Francisco.

From the minute our free shuttle bus entered the stately mile-long  Palm Avenue into the university, one thing became immediately obvious – money.  The buildings are magnificent and immaculate, and glow with quality and cleanliness.  There are acres of thick and luxuriant vivid green lawns, fastidiously edged, which you can smell growing.  There are groves of shady trees, beds of brilliant flowers, and I do not believe there is a single weed on the entire campus.

 

We have arrived.  Looking back down Palm Avenue.

Stanford University was established in 1891 by Leland (a former Governor of California and US Senator) and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child Leland Jnr who died of typhoid at the age of 15 while travelling with them in Italy. Within weeks of his death, the Stanfords decided that, because they no longer could do anything for their own child, "the children of California shall be our children."  From the outset, they made some untraditional choices: the university would be coeducational, non-denominational, and predominantly practical, producing "cultured and useful citizens."

 

The Stanfords engaged Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed landscape architect who created New York’s Central Park, to design the physical plan for the university.  (This is just a very small part of it.)

 

Front entrance, where there is some maintenance happening.  But I think they must spent millions in maintenance every week.  We were here during the university vacation, so there weren’t too many people around, apart from a few wholesome intelligent-looking students riding ecologically around on their bikes.  Behind this building in front, across a courtyard, rises the spectacular mosaic front of a church.

 

Lo and behold, there in the front garden are Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, interspersed with some Japanese tourists.

 

One of the Burghers, Jean dÁire.

 

Stanford Memorial Church (also known as MemChu) is located at the centre of the campus. It was built by Jane Stanford, and dedicated in 1903 as a memorial to her husband Leland, who had died in 1893.  The church was damaged by two major earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, and has been extensively renovated after each, so that today it is as neat as a pin.

My first impression was that the mosaics reminded me of some that I had seen in Ravenna in Italy, and that the style of external decoration reminded me of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. I later read that the building was designed to be Byzantine in form, with mosaics inspired by those of the churches in Ravenna.  Paintings were inspired by those that Jane had seen in other parts of Europe.

According to that trusted source of information Wikipedia, the church was built during the American Renaissance period, a time of “architectural eclecticism, so elements of styles from different eras are synthesized in its design.” Wikipedia also told me that Jane Stanford has been described as having a "Victorian aversion to blank space".  All of that is clearly evident in this church.

 

Exterior wall mosaic – could be straight from Ravenna except it’s much cleaner.

 

Interior wall mosaic detail.

 

Interior view.

 

Mosaic angel – note Victorian detailing.

I think that Jane succeeded in her plan to build a church which would "dazzle the eye yet also produce an atmosphere of quiet contemplation".

 

Walking around the campus revealed one vista after another.

 

Cloisters (there were lots of them).

 

A library.

 

Fountains and flowers (lots of them too).

 

A small art gallery (closed as an exhibition was being prepared there.)

 

A Henry Moore sculpture (Large Torso: Arch, 1962-3).

 

An American Indian totem pole.

 

A marble sculpture (Antoine Poncet: Retrofutee, 1969).

 

A tiled roof being polished.

 

Oh, another fountain.

 

The Hoover Tower was completed in 1941 to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary, and can be seen from all over the campus.  Herbert Hoover was the 31st President of the United States from 1929 – 33.  He was also famous for organising the Belgian Relief, the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War.

 

We went to the top of the Hoover Tower (for $2 each) and were rewarded by a magnificent view of the campus, and a bit beyond.  Note the Henry Moore sculpture in the left foreground.

 

At the top of the tower is a carillon of 48 bells cast in Belgium, with the largest bell inscribed, "For Peace Alone Do I Ring."

 

One of the music lecturers comes up here every now and then and plays the carillon.

 

We then walked over to the Cantor Arts Centre, and there, to our amazement, was an entire gardenful of Rodin sculptures – 20 in all, including The Gates of Hell.  Apparently, they also own The Thinker, but that is currently on loan to a university in Carolina.

Twenty bronzes, including The Gates of Hell on which Rodin worked for two decades, are outside in the Sculpture Garden.  The garden was dedicated in 1985 to honour B. Gerald Cantor, the primary donor of the Centre’s Rodin collection.

 

The Gates of Hell.

Rodin worked on this project for 37 years from 1880 until his death in 1917.  It depicts a scene from The Inferno, the first section of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

We had lunch overlooking this manicured lawn, marvelling over what we had seen so far.  Then we went into the Cantor Arts Centre, which makes the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London look shabby.  But that will be another story…..