The Other Side of the Creek: The Little Pump House at Hale Street

Editor’s note: “The Other Side of the Creek” is a series designed to capture the life and spirit just beyond San Francisquito Creek — the shared landmark separating Menlo Park from the communities to the south.

On the Palo Alto side of San Francisquito Creek, a small stucco building stands at the north end of Hale Street, between Palo Alto Avenue and the creek. Its arched wooden doorway and tiled roof give it a carefully finished appearance, but offer few clues about the work it once performed. What was this little building doing beside the creek?

It helped supply water to northern Palo Alto. In the Fall 2015 newsletter of Palo Alto Stanford Heritage, Steve Emslie dates the city-owned pump house to 1924 and explains that it served the adjacent reservoir. The organization, known as PAST, later undertook its exterior restoration.

PAST identifies the architecture as Mission Revival. The National Park Service’s explanation of the style describes buildings that borrowed shapes from Spanish missions, using broad stucco surfaces, recessed openings, and clay roof tiles. By the early 1900s, those forms had become popular in the western United States. At Hale Street, they gave a practical water facility an architectural presence of its own.

A 2023 historic survey prepared by Page & Turnbull for the city offers a more specific explanation. It identifies the pump house as one of two remaining examples of early Palo Alto’s decorated utility buildings and associates it with the City Beautiful movement. In the survey’s assessment, the building’s design expressed pride in public infrastructure. Its appearance was part of its civic purpose.

The water facilities at the site changed over time. A city plan adopted in 2007 describes a well drilled there in 1955, alongside the pump house and an old circular reservoir. The plan proposed rehabilitating the well for emergency water supply while leaving the historic building’s exterior unchanged. This documents a later source of groundwater at the site, but does not establish how water reached the reservoir in 1924.

PAST’s preservation work developed alongside the city’s utility work. In the organization’s Autumn 2011 newsletter, on page 7, Grace Hinton recalled its 2009 pledge to improve the historic windows and doors. By the time she wrote, the Public Utilities Department had rehabilitated a pump at the site. Heavy equipment used in the repairs had damaged the driveways, and planned repairs included changing the asphalt in front of the building so that water would stop draining toward the door. PAST could proceed with the woodwork once that problem was addressed.

That sequence matters. The National Park Service’s guidance on historic exterior woodwork explains that moisture can make wood swell and cause paint to lose its grip. Repainting before correcting the moisture problem leaves the new finish vulnerable to the same failure. Preserving the doorway depended partly on what happened to the ground outside it.

Emslie’s 2015 restoration account describes superficial cracks in the stucco and a peeling door finish that exposed bare wood. PAST board members had offered funding in 2014, and the organization selected restoration contractor Daniel Cray. It also sought advice from the city’s Historic Resources Board before receiving final city approval in April 2015.

According to PAST’s project record, work began on April 27, 2015, with finishing touches completed on May 5. PAST reports that the exterior was repainted in its original color and that the windows, grille work, and door were stripped and repainted in their original colors.

Writing in 2015, Emslie described the historic pump house as no longer in use, its function replaced by modern systems. The accounts do not establish the retirement date of the historic pump house or the later operating status of the wider well site.

The next time you reach Hale Street from Palo Alto Avenue, look toward the arched doorway. Behind that carefully finished facade was a practical task: helping supply the neighborhood with water. The building gives that otherwise easily overlooked work a visible place beside the creek.

Photo by Ardan Michael Blum (c) 2026; Secure form to reach Ardan