Iconic Sunset Magazine Headquarters Threatened with Demolition
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553 | M: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org
Modernist campus by landscape architect Thomas Church and architect Cliff May was created to promote the California lifestyle
Washington, D.C. (March 26, 2024) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today designated the seven-acre Sunset Magazine Headquarters, in Menlo Park, CA, as a Landslide nationally significant site that is threatened. Designed by architect Cliff May and landscape architect Thomas Church, the corporate campus, which opened in 1952 and was created to promote the California lifestyle, is slated for demolition. In late 2023, the real estate developer, N17 Development, submitted a proposal to erect three towers ranging from 305 to 421 feet on the property, located at 80 Willow Road. The Modernist corporate campus served as an incubator and laboratory on the art of living in the West – indoors and out. If approved, the project will destroy Sunset’s iconic building and grounds that served as its headquarters from 1951 to 2015 and will significantly alter views from the surrounding Menlo Park and Palo Alto neighborhoods.
History and Threat
Sunset magazine was founded in 1898 by the Southern Pacific Railroad to encourage tourism to California and the West. In 1929 Laurence Lane, a former Better Homes and Gardens advertising director, and his wife Ruth purchased Sunset, reinventing it as a lifestyle magazine. By 1950 the publication outgrew its San Francisco office, and the Lanes acquired a seven-acre parcel in Menlo Park, originally part of a grant to Don José Arguello, governor of Spanish California in 1815. The couple engaged Cliff May and Thomas Church to design the magazine’s new headquarters.
Constructed in 1951, with ongoing additions until 1966, the oak-studded campus’ over scaled ranch house with its expansive lawn (which was becoming an icon of suburban living) is contiguous with the curvilinear San Francisquito Creek, which serves as a border between Menlo Park (to the north) and Palo Alto (on the south). Sunset opened to the public in 1952. The two-winged structure resembles a square doughnut and embodies many of May’s innovations, employing contemporary materials and ideas. May aimed to modernize the ranch house without compromising its relaxed, informal, indoor-outdoor qualities. Like other May and Church commissions, interior and exterior spaces were integrated with ample patio gardens. As Sunset editor Proctor Mellquist noted, “You know Disneyland’s Main Street. It’s an urban design at 7/8 scale. Well, Sunset is just the opposite: a residential design at 9/8 scale.”
Helping to make a seamless transition where architecture melds into landscape architecture, Church designed a biomorphically shaped lawn framed by the office structure and edged by curvilinear, meandering walkways that extend outwards following the contours of the creek. In these curving and snaking beds were display gardens representing a distinct western climatic zone, from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California. Existing oaks were protected, including one specimen visible from the lobby. Here at Sunset’s headquarters, Church’s design approach to modern living in California had become extensions of the landscape architect’s values -- and vice-versa. Developed as a living laboratory, the campus and its tastemaking demonstration gardens attracted thousands of visitors and were regularly featured in the magazine. The headquarters served as a publicly accessible symbol for the lifestyle that Sunset was promoting, demonstrating the virtues of modern living inside and outside, and the essential design approach, materials, and methods to achieve. The magazine and its campus shaped the identity and taste of myriad upwardly mobile western suburbanites in the post-World War II era.
In 1990, after nearly a century of publishing, the Lanes sold Sunset to Time magazine, which sold the property in 2014 to a real estate investment firm. The following year Sunset moved to Oakland and the property was documented by a Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). The survey was awarded first place in the National Park Service’s annual HALS Challenge.
While the original display gardens have been altered over time, the creek’s northern bank retains its serpentine border, still populated by several original trees and shrubs, including mature oaks that were protected by Church. The headquarters’ structure and numerous landscape features, including the generous lawn edged by paths and the patio gardens, survive.
In 2018 the Sunset Magazine Headquarters property was purchased by a group that includes the son of a former energy minister to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On December 7, 2023, real estate developer N17 Development submitted a proposal to Menlo Park on behalf of the owners, seeking to demolish Sunset Headquarters and erect three towers on the site: two residential structures, (421 and 371 feet tall) and one office building (305 feet tall). If erected, the three towers will destroy work of architecture and landscape architecture that is likely eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and will dominate views from the surrounding Menlo Park and Palo Alto neighborhoods, which is characterized by one and two-story structures.
Daniel Gregory (author, architectural historian, and former Sunset senior home editor) said: "The Sunset campus is a landmark early example of environmental design. It popularized how structure and site could be extensions of each other, and uniquely symbolized life in the West during the1950s. Instead of senseless demolition, why not make use of its storied history by adapting and reinventing it to showcase the possibilities for California living in the 21st century -- for example, the way another landmark like San Francisco's Ferry Building was reinvented for today without sacrificing its special character."
“The seamless demonstration grounds of the Sunset Headquarters campus is as significant and worthy of protection and designation as Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, which was conceived as Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert laboratory, and the Los Angeles home of Charles and Ray Eames, which was commissioned by arts & architecture magazine as part of their Case Study House program and challenged architects to design progressive, but modest, homes in Southern California,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF’s President & CEO. “The only difference between these tastemaking properties is that the latter two are recognized as National Historic Landmarks.”
Advocates want anyone concerned about the threat to contact the mayors of Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and to attend an April 24 webinar hosted by the California Garden and Landscape History Society (CGLHS).
About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 1998 to connect people to places. TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards. Through its website, publishing, lectures, and other events, TCLF broadens support and understanding for cultural landscapes. TCLF is also home to the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.
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