Dean Clark

From Palo Alto Wiki

Dean Clark is the son of Birge Clark and grandson of Arthur B. Clark, both architects who designed many historic Palo Alto buildings.

[edit] Memories

Clark's various memories were printed during the Palo Alto Centennial in 1994.

"One Halloween in the middle 1930s a group of us was out trick-or-treating--or rather, ringing doorbells. You rang the doorbell and ran. Two of my friends were picked up by the police for setting off firecrackers and taken down to the old police station and jail on Ramona (designed by Birge Clark, now the Palo Alto Senior Center). So the rest of us went down there to see if we could get them out.

"Now at that time there was a cathouse down on Charleston Avenue, and the police had raided it and brought in all the girls. So there we were, a bunch of 10- and 11-year-old boys and all these girls from the cathouse. None of us had ever heard of a cathouse before, so we immediately went home and tried to find out from our older brothers. We got different reports because some of the brothers weren't that much older, but we finally got it figured out. . . .

"The circus used to come to town, to the old Greer property where Town and Country Village is now. The circus would arrive on the railroad . . . and all the kids in town would be down there waiting at 3 or 4 a.m. to get jobs, because you got a pass to see the circus if you had a job. They needed people to help set up, boys to lug water for the elephants and horses."