Sunset Magazine’s Historic Menlo Park Campus Is in Danger of Being Erased. Here’s What You Can Do to Help.

Sunset’s historic campus in Menlo Park, the former home of this storied magazine and media company, isn’t just a collection of buildings—it’s a physical embodiment of the Western way of life. Built in 1951 by architect Cliff May, it’s open, adaptable, and seamlessly connected to the outdoors. It’s where Sunset redefined what it meant to live in the West. It’s where we refined recipes in the test kitchen, planted experimental gardens, and built an indoor-outdoor lifestyle that people across the country aspired to. It’s where the Western Garden Book was created, where thousands of articles and dozens of books were edited, and where the Sunset staff helped incubate, workshop, and refine recipes, garden guides, home tours, and how-tos.  It was a living museum of evolving Western culture and hosted thousands of visitors who toured its gardens and joined the festivities at the annual Celebration Weekends that, yes, celebrated the Western way of life.

Sunset/Menlo Atherton High School Yearbook

That vital history is in danger of being erased as the new owner of the campus is proposing to construct a multi tower, mixed-use development, including more than 350,000 square feet of offices, a 130-room hotel, and 665 housing units. Without protection from the National Register of Historic Places, the campus could be altered beyond recognition or lost entirely. As the responsible development organization Menlo Forward points out on its website, the largest of the towers is 39 stories and 461 feet tall, making it “the tallest building in California outside of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.”

Thomas J. Story

Thomas J. Story

The Cultural Landscape Foundation identified it as an at-risk landscape in early 2024, and on their website write “the threat to the site has become dire. Real estate developer, N17 Development, seeks to raze the site’s iconic California Ranch-style office building (designed by architect Cliff May), and Modernist landscape (designed by landscape architect Thomas Church) to erect a complex of towers ranging in height from 301 to 401 feet tall. If built, the towers would not only dominate views from the surrounding Menlo Park and Palo Alto neighborhoods, characterized by low (one-and two-story) structures, but as TCLF President Charles A. Birnbaum has previously stated, such a massive construction project would obliterate a “campus [that] 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… [and] the only difference between those tastemaking properties is that the latter two are recognized as National Historic Landmarks.”

Daniel Gregory

Thanks to the efforts of the Menlo Park Historical Association and preservation consultant Chattel Inc., an application for listing in the National Register of Historic Places has been submitted. By writing a letter of support to the members of the State Historical Resources Commission stating why you think the Sunset Menlo Park campus deserves official listing, you can help ensure the property and its gardens receive the recognition and protection they deserve. Perhaps you have fond memories of attending one of our legendary Celebration Weekends, maybe you’re a fan of Cliff May’s gracious ranch-style architecture, or maybe you simply can’t bear the thought of yet another one of our architectural treasures disappearing. Let it be known.

Thomas J. Story

Your voice can make the difference in safeguarding a place that has shaped the way we live, eat, and dream in the West for generations. We’ve lost too much already. Let’s save what we can. Send an email to calshpo.shrc@parks.ca.gov by 9 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30—be sure to include the name of the nomination (Sunset Magazine Headquarters) and the hearing date (May 9, 2025) in the email’s subject line.