The Lilian Bridgman / LeRoy Stephens House
Some Notes on the History of This House
Provided by Laura Snable
Laura Snable, a resident of Los Altos Hills sent an e-mail to the Town's History Committee, in which she described the results of some research she had done into the history of her house located on Robleda Road. She wrote:
I am grateful to the LAH Historical Society for hosting author Inge Horton’s lecture in October 2010 because I had fervently wanted to know the history of my home. In the small photo that ran in the Town Crier ad for that lecture, I didn’t recognize it at first, but when I looked up the names given for the architect and original owner, I found more online photos on Bancroft Library’s website, and that confirmed it was mine.
Lilian Bridgman - BackgroundThe Following Notes About The House On RobledaLilian Bridgman, architect of the subject house, was born in eastern Kansas in 1866 to Israel Noble Bridgman and Sarah Ezilda. She attended the Kansas State Agricultural College, graduating in 1888 with a degree in science. Her transcripts also reveal an interest in drawing, literature and music. In 1891, she came to the University of California, Berkeley where she studied with Professor Joseph LeConte. She earned her master's degree in science in 1893.
In 1899, 16 years before she obtained her architectural license, Lilian “Lillie” Belle Bridgman designed—with Bernard Maybeck’s help and William Knowles’ drawings—her own brown-shingle Arts & Crafts residence, 1715 La Loma Avenue, on Berkeley’s Northside. Two years later, the high school science teacher was serving on the Hillside Club’s advisory board, formed to offer advice to home builders. In 1908, she built a rustic studio behind her house that later served for her architectural practice.
She was in her mid-40s when, disenchanted with the low wages paid to women teachers, she returned to U.C. to study architecture and worked for a while as a draftsperson in Walter Ratcliff’s office.
In 1915, Bridgman launched her modest architectural practice. Her style ranged from First Bay Tradition to modern Mediterranean. Busiest after the 1923 fire, she designed comfortable houses with many built-ins, as well as custom furniture.
A Berkeley Historical E-Plaque (Electronic Plaque) with more information about Lilian Bridgman may be seen here.
The following notes are derived from the email sent by Laura Snable to the Los Altos Hills History Committee in 2022, together with the color images she enclosed, and further supplemented with some images retrieved from the on-line archives of The Bancroft Library.
1 This is one of the earliest pictures we have of the house. Note the presence of orchards stretching over extensive properties.
2 This picture shows the house as it is today (2022). The entrance of the house has been moved from the north (Bay view side) to the west. A new balcony and glass-fronted living room with chimney have been added onto the main level, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a garage below. Plus, there is an additional west wing with two bedrooms. Introduction
This house is located on Robleda Road in Los Altos Hills. The known history of the property dates back to approximately 1912, when Eleanor Harlow Stephens Williams, an early female graduate of Stanford (1899, English: link ) and Francis Williams, an M.D. physician who did graduate work at Stanford, bought approximately 20 acres between Robleda Avenue and La Paloma Road for a summer home. (Francis Williams' obituary may be seen here link )
Francis used dynamite to clear the land for apricot and walnut orchards. Their craftsman ranch house was at the La Paloma Road side of their acreage, likely at 26070 Newbridge Drive (per Harlow L. Williams, Jr., grandson of Eleanor and Francis; who the author of these notes met in 2014.)
The research and following notes about this property were triggered when the current owner attended a lecture put on by the LAH Historical Society who hosted a lecture by the author Inge Horton in October 2010.
Laura Snable wrote:
In the small photo that ran in the Town Crier ad for that lecture, I didn’t recognize it at first, but when I looked up the names given for the architect and original owner, I found more online photos on Bancroft Library’s website, and that confirmed it was mine. Very exciting! After that, I arranged a visit to the library to see the materials on the architect, Lilian Bridgman, and I saw more relevant house photos that weren’t online, such as the original floor plan and a watercolor of the front elevation. What’s nice is a person can pay to have digital files of the photos, so I bought the ones I wanted and hung a few on my living room wall.
Here’s a link to the dozen they have online (note that Stephens is spelled incorrectly there as Stevens): link
County records have my house date as 1938, but all evidence points to a decade earlier. I wonder if the owner didn’t register it until 1938 as it was merely a vacation home.
Here’s my incomplete research on its early history. I haven’t done any in a long time, other than finding a helpful aerial photo on UC Santa Barbara’s website, which proved the house existed by October 1930. But I just now noticed that Bancroft library has boxes of letters to and from Lilian, so maybe those would answer the mystery of the exact year it was built. I wonder how long it took as it was done without power tools.
~1912 San Francisco couple Eleanor Harlow (Stephens) Williams, a member of Stanford’s first graduating class, and Francis Williams, an MD physician/surgeon who graduated from Stockton and was originally from Texas, bought ~20 acres between Robleda Avenue and La Paloma Road for a summer home. Francis used dynamite to clear the land for apricot and walnut orchards. Their craftsman ranch house was off of Newbridge Drive (#26050––?). (per Harlow L. Williams, Jr., grandson of Eleanor and Francis; I met him in 2014.)
12/31/1926 Eleanor and Francis Williams conveyed for $10 a two-acre parcel to her brother LeRoy H. Stephens (1880-1948), Stanford graduate 1902, -03, teacher and principal at Lowell High School in SF 1909-1948. (Official Records, Book 312, p 490; filed 4/18/27 in grantor/grantee records; also Stanford Alumni and Lowell High School Graduating Class records online)
~1927-1930 Lilian Bridgman (1866-1948; science teacher in SF, poet, Berkeley architect) designed a Spanish-style two-bedroom “weekend getaway” house for her friend Stephens. A photo shows it being built before power lines. (Lilian Bridgman Photographic Collection/Papers/ BANC PIC 1989.044 in Photos relating to LB, Bancroft Library, University of CA, Berkeley, CA)
10/6/1930 Flight C-1180, Frame 9. (Aerial photo taken from red dot near San Antonio Rd and Almond Ave/Merritt Rd) To reach this page, use the following link to reach a web page where you then use the "Search Box" on this page with the value "Los Altos" to reach the page showing the red dot on a map showing the local area. link
11/23/1932 Stephens granted a right of way for an electric transmission line. (Book 629, p 475)
11/3/1948 Stephens died the same year he retired. He was never married.
2/15/1950 Recording date of property transfer to Stephens’ nephew Harlow L. Williams. (Record #620769; no grantor or document title listed) Harlow and Imelda Williams lived here for several years and had the first five of their eight children. (per Harlow L. Williams, Jr., son of Harlow and Imelda) Francis Williams died in ~1952/53; the other more or less remaining 18 acres were split between son Harlow and daughter Eleanor Walker. Harlow sold right away. Eleanor sold off most but continued living in the beautiful family ranch house on one acre at 26050 (?) Newbridge Drive till she died in the 1980s or 90s. (per Harlow L. Williams, Jr.)
10/19/1951 Record of Survey of Lot 19, Map of the M&M Taaffe Subdivision of Lot 4 of the Taaffe Partition (Book 35 of Maps, page 5)
12/??/1951 Harlow and Imelda Williams sold the two-acre property to Leo D. and Helen C. Morrison, who were popular because they owned a pet store in Los Altos. (per Harlow L. Williams, Jr.) Then, Morrison sold the lower acre (now 13597) to the Barretts.
12/26/1951 Harlow and Imelda Williams granted Philip and Jananne Barrett joint tenancy of the driveway bridge.
1/2/1952 Quit claim deed of one acre (now 13597) by Leo and Helen Morrison to Philip and Jananne Barrett.
3/24/1952 Agreement granting reciprocal bridge access easements between the Williams and Morrisons all of whom recently or currently owned Parcel 1 (now 13581) and Philip and Jananne Barrett who owned the adjoining Parcel 2 (now 13597) . Morrison had owned two acres. Morrison sold one. Thus, both Morrison and Williams conveyed approx. one acre portion of property to Barrett. (Recorded 4/15/1952 in Official Records, Book 2402, p 364)
1957-1983 The next owners, Louis and Dawn Sarto, added quite a bit during the 1960s. Permits are on file with LAH. (In 2011, I met Baron, one of their three kids.)
1983-1998 The next owner, Thomas Benson, did a little remodeling in living and dining rooms.
1998-present Finally, we, Laura and Jay Snable, have done a lot of updates with the house’s original style in mind. Still to do are a 1960s bathroom and a 1980s kitchen. Attached are three snapshots from today (see color photographs on this page). It is greatly altered from original, so I don’t think it qualifies for any special status, but at least it could be on our town’s list since the architect is of Bay Area interest. Sadly, the original charming side arches went away during the 1960s expansion. In the second photo you can just see the roofline of the even older Panofsky house on Chapin. That house was in the background of the photo for the 2010 lecture, and clued me into the fact that this must be my house!
Please let me know what you think. Thanks!
Laura Snable
Robleda RoadBelow are a series of photographs—including two more color photographs taken by Laura herself, (numbers 3 and 4), and then another dozen or so retrieved from the archives of the Bancroft Library in Berkeley.
3 Current (2022) picture showing the left end of the house, where you can clearly see that the front of the house has been brought forward (five large square windows in upper story) as well as the garage on the main ground level (two square nine-paned windows on the right with further accommodations to the left "behind" the garage. Note that the roof ridge of the Panofsky house is just visible above the trees immediately to the left. (More information about this older house in Photo 5 below).
4 Current (2022) picture showing the right end of the house taken from just in front of the garage. View of the main steps that form the main entrance to the house, leading up the the main living floor.
5 Another early view of the house in “Orchard Country.” The neighboring Panofsky house (W. K. H. Panofsky Home (1900s) on Chapin Road, built by a sea captain; architecturally unique for its Dutch colonial style) is clearly visible on the ridgeline just to the left.
6 A similar but more detailed view of the house - probably taken at the same time as the previous image. Although it appears that it might merely be a cropped and then enlarged version of the previous image, it is catalogued as a separate photograph in the archives of the Bancroft Library. Note the distinctive arches underneath the balcony, presumably enclosing some kind of loggia space, as well at what appears to be a back staircase (left of the arches) leading down from the balcony area. Both of these features disappeared when this part of the house was remodeled extensively in the 1960s. The front was brought forward, significantly enlarging that section of the house.
7 Another photo probably taken at the same time as the preceding two images, but from a slightly different viewpoint (the Panofsky house is juxtaposed more closely) and the vertical format of the photo allows for more of the orchard in the foreground to be shown.
8 This view of the house is taken from an uphill position looking eastward down past the front face of the house and toward the orchards across Robleda. Decades later the house will be extensively remodeled, and the front part (to the left of the steps going up to the main level) will be extended out towards the left. The ground level will become a garage with the driveway routed to that side of the house, and above the garage the second level of the house will also be extended to make a larger living space with large windows and a balcony overlooking the orchard.
9 This view is of the street-facing east side of the house looking back towards the area from where previous photos were taken. Here you can indeed see that there was a "back staircase" beyond the arches where later this lower level was expanded. This is a composite image assembled from two separate photographs retrieved from the Bancroft archives. They were both digitally "processed" slightly to have roughly matching lighting and contrast values, and the relative sizes of the two pictures had to be adjusted so that they reflect matching scales.
10 In this final exterior view, we are looking at the back of the house from a viewpoint not far from that of the previous image. Notice that this door and the window just beyond it can also be seen at the extreme left of the preceding image number 9. The small 9x5 paneled grid window (in images 9 and 10) was later replaced with a stained-glass bird-themed window dated 1984.
Following are a few interior scenes taken from within the house. The first three photos form a serial panorama of the living room sweeping from left to right, while the fourth picture is taken outside the main entry door to the living room. Lilian Bridgman designed the table and sconces seen in these interior shots. Her plans for these are in the collection at Bancroft Library. The built-in bookshelf-niche area was later altered, likely in the 1980s, to accommodate a TV. Discarded tiles and rusty sconces were later found in the ground behind the house.
11 The left-most picture in a panoramic series of three, here we see a wicker basket on the left, presumably to hold firewood for the fireplace next to it. Beyond that is a chair and to the extreme right we see part of a table. These latter two items form the center-piece of the next image.
12 Here we are looking a little to the right of the previous picture. The chair is now occupied by (presumably) the master of the house perusing a book taken from the built-in shelves next to him. Apparently California wines were not as popular then as they are today, as we can see a bottle of what appears to be Italian Chianti on the table.
We can also deduce that this picture was taken some time after November 1932 when rights were granted for an electrical transmission line to cross the property. On the wall we can see a light-switch, and there appears to be an electrical cord running from under the table to the lamp on top of the table.
13 Moving our view further to the right, we see the same bookshelves and an opening that leads out of the room and faces a swinging door (no longer there) to the kitchen. It also provides access to a passageway that leads to the left behind the bookshelf wall. According to the original layout, this was an L-shaped hallway that led to the owner’s bedroom. Since then, the L-shaped hallway was closed off and the owner’s bedroom space was combined with the original kitchen space to form a larger kitchen. At the extreme right side of this picture we can see what appear to be glass-paned French doors leading to the outside - that lead us to the next picture.
14 Here we are outside those glass-paned entry doors looking at the steps indicated on the original plan as going up to the guest room. While they were originally outside, the 1960s additions incorporated them into the interior. To the right of these steps is an area that serves both as a landing for the steps as well as a balcony with a railing that leads to the first flight of the main entry stairs coming up from the ground level. While the house has been remodeled and enlarged, it is still clearly recognizable as an evolution of its original design. However, the terrain and wider geographic context in which it was initially built have changed beyond all recognition.We have aerial photos from the time when the orchards had became established in what became known as the "Valley of The Heart's Delight" and also of the exact same spot taken nearly a century later when it was better known as an up-scale semi-rural residential suburb of "Silicon Valley."
Compare the following two photos - the first was taken of that area in October of 1930 (California Aerial Survey) while the next image dates from around 2020 (Santa Clara Count GIS database). The two are recognizable as being related only when the shapes of the nearby roadways are used as landmarks for orientation.
15 Aerial photo taken by California Aerial Survey in October of 1930. (This image is a detail that was cropped out of a larger aerial photograph. To see see this area within the wider context of the Town of Los Altos Hills, click here to see a larger image. Depending on thr type of platform you are using to view the image, you may have different options to enable you to zoom in and out.)
16 Screen image captured when viewing this area as recorded by the Santa Clara County Geographical Information System (GIS) probably as seen by an orbiting satellite in 2022.
The color images (numbers 2, 3, and 4) were provided by Laura Snable. Image numbers 1 and 5-14 were retrieved via the OAC (Online Archive of California) which is a service of the UC Libraries, powered by the California Digital Library. The images themselves are from the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.The latter black-and-white images were retrieved as digital files and then "processed" slightly to make them more uniform across the set in terms of monochrome black-and-white tones as well as lighting values of brightness and contrast. The images were also slightly "sharpened" via computer processing to enhance their clarity to the extent possible.
