Palo Alto: Wrap Your Brain Around It

About halfway along the boulevard sits the B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden, whose pathways lead to the Cantor Arts Center. Free to the public, the center has 24 galleries, terraces and courtyards for displaying some of the 25,000 treasures from the world's cultures.

I find myself most moved by the two rooms devoted to the history of the Stanford family and the university they built.

Leland Stanford, a California governor from 1862 to 1864 and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, was one of the wealthiest men of his day. For Leland, the huge property Stanford now comprises was once a plaything -- a farm for breeding horses. He built a railroad track around the farm, in part to amuse his young son.

Leland Jr. was clearly an exceptionally intelligent, handsome, precocious and much beloved only son. A room in the museum is devoted in large measure to portraits of Leland Jr. and to his childhood collection of Japanese, Chinese and Native American objects. No ordinary boy, he also had some small pieces from the 1873 excavations of Troy that were found by a family friend, the famed archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann.

But in 1884, at the age of 15, the promising son contracted typhoid fever and died.

The first time I saw Stanford University and learned that it had been built to memorialize the death of a son, I felt a stab of class resentment. Most of us are lucky, after all, to get a little slab of marble. But my attitude changed during my most recent trip in July. I was touring with two friends who, like me and the Stanfords, had a single child, born fairly late in our lives. All three of us became teary-eyed reading the framed cable, eloquent in its simplicity, that Leland Jr.'s mother sent to a friend more than 100 years ago.

"Our darling boy is taken from us," it reads. "Pray for us."

The idea of building a great institution of learning "for other people's children" -- as Leland Sr. described it -- was launched weeks after Leland Jr.'s death. It was not always easy. In the museum is a portrait of Jane Stanford's jewels and an explanation: When money began running short to complete this grand university, she sold her rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls to raise money, but she first arranged them on velvet and had an artist paint them.

Those interested in science might like to tour the Linear Accelerator Center or stop by the William Gates Computer Science Building, where the walls are made of whiteboard so computer geeks can jot down any brilliant ideas that suddenly pop into their heads, and where there are plenty of showers in case those ideas demand a couple of all-nighters.

My personal favorites: Hoover Tower and Stanford Memorial Church. The church, dedicated in 1903, is made of sculpted sandstone, its arches towering over brilliant mosaics in 20,000 hues. Sound blasts from the 4,332 pipes in the largest of the church's four organs. The sanctuary provides a great venue for classical concerts, and on Sunday nights, the church features candlelit services with Gregorian chants.

The Hoover Tower is part of the Hoover Institution, where prominent conservatives think and write in the midst of an otherwise liberal campus. Prior to my visit to the ground floor of the 285-foot tower, I thought of President Herbert Hoover as the guy who sent in the Army to beat up World War I veterans who came to Washington to demand a promised bonus, and as the president who led the United States during the worst of the Depression years. But it turns out, according to the documents and memorabilia displayed in the tower, he was also a great humanitarian who rescued Chinese children during the Boxer Rebellion and fed millions of starving Europeans during both World Wars.

Politics aside, the observation deck on the top of the tower is the best $2 view around.