Inside the historic English manor with ties to Palo Alto’s former booze ban

The exterior of the three-story, 1916-era home on the 800 block of Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto has all the attributes of a genuine English manor: symmetrical gables, a central oriel and a steep-pitched roof with narrow banks of windows and dormers. Designed by noted Palo Alto architect Charles K. Sumner, whose eclectic work can be found throughout residential neighborhoods in Palo Alto and Stanford, the 25-room estate has retained ...

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Peninsula author captures the journey of a would-be presidential assassin from suburban mom to the fringes of ’70s counterculture

Keep up a nearly 30-year correspondence with anyone and you'll get to know a lot about them. But for investigative journalist and Palo Alto-based author Geri Spieler, who traded letters for 28 years with would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore, she also discovered the ways in which Moore was unknowable, by her own design — as well as the things she couldn't hide about herself.

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