Holbrook--Palmer Estate, "Elmwood" - Atherton, CA - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

"Located in Holbrook-Palmer Park in Atherton, California, is a pair of nineteenth-century agricultural outbuildings constructed as part of a rural estate historically known as the Holbrook-Palmer Estate, or “Elmwood.” The older of the two buildings is the “Water Tower.” Built ca. 1883, it is a three-story, heavy timber-frame tankhouse built to store groundwater in a large redwood tank on the top floor. Water was then distributed by gravity to the nearby house, fields, gardens, and other outbuildings. The Water Tower is clad in redwood rustic channel siding and it is embellished with applied ornament designed in the Second Empire style, a French-inspired architectural movement popular in the United States during the 1870s and early 1880s. Unusually elaborate for a utilitarian building type, the Water Tower is capped by an ornamental balcony and a French “Mansard” roof clad in wooden shingles. Located across a driveway from the Water Tower is the Gen Merrill Carriage House. Built in 1897 by Charles Holbrook, the two-story, heavy timber-frame building features a carriage storage room, stables, and tack rooms on the first floor; and a large hay loft and bunkhouse on the second floor. The building is capped by a compound hip-and-gable roof that is crowned by a pyramidal-roof ventilator. In contrast to the flamboyant Water Tower, the Carriage House is designed in the restrained Colonial Revival style, an indigenous American architectural style popular during the 1890s. Both buildings are in very good condition and neither has undergone any substantial exterior or interior alterations. They both retain the following aspects of integrity: location, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. Neither building retains the aspect of setting because the surrounding landscape was changed from a rural estate into a municipal park in the late 1960s. Nonetheless, the boundaries of the park correspond to the limits of the Elmwood Estate and both buildings are still surrounded by open space." (visit link)

Street address: 150 Watkins Ave., Atherton, CA USA County / Borough / Parish: San Mateo Year listed: 2016 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Architecture/Engineering Periods of significance: 1883-1897 Historic function: domestic Current function: Recreation And Culture Privately owned?: no Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Website 1: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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