Fairmeadow, Palo Alto

Situated between Alma Street and Middlefield Road, Fairmeadow is a less than glamorous middle to lower middle-class Palo Alto community. It spans about 0.25 square miles of a densely populated neighborhood (population: 1,000). As a whole, the district has an old, traditional appeal to it, which can be off putting to some young professionals and families, but still maintains that sort of mid-century charm. Demographically speaking, the racial makeup is largely white (almost 75%), with a rather sizable asian minority.

Fairmeadow’s residential quarters are blended between owner-occupied residences and rental friendly condos and apartment buildings. Its overarching theme seems to be imbedded in the high-design of the 1950’s suburban development model of California ranch homes and Eichlers. But unlike most old neighborhoods, Fairmeadow residences have undergone a lack of redevelopment, eliciting an aged and decaying sense of style. Moreover, most of these homes are situated on ignored and unkempt properties. As for its communal spaces, the neighborhood’s roads are designed in concentric circles with lush, green bushes lining each block. In turn, this provides a quiet and safe area for children to play outdoors.

For young families, Fairmeadow has a great public school system. In fact, Fairmeadow Elementary School has garnered a 5-out-of-5 stars on greatschools.org. Moreover, the neighborhood encompasses Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School and Herbert Hoover Elementary School, both under the leadership of the praised Palo Alto Unified School District. For your commercial needs, the mid-town shopping area is within walking distance and provides a small market, a coffee shop, a couple local businesses and some smaller stores for your household essentials.

Like many of the neighborhoods in Palo Alto, Fairmeadow has a ton of Eichler style homes with their distinctive flat roofs. Unlike most other neighborhoods in Palo Alto, however, the Fairmeadow neighborhood has a really cool circular structure where streets wheel around in a turn-about like street plan.

But the quality of the Eichlers in this neighborhood are also fairly different. They just seem much more well-kept than Eichlers in other neighborhoods and every so often you come across one that is painted in a distinctive blue color, or with red trim roofs and front facing car ports. There is one particularly unusual looking one on Ramona Cir.—it’s a blue and yellow house that looks as if it were made from parts from an Ikea store. Definitely worth checking out if you are a residential architecture buff.

I personally find this look at once classic and distinctly modern. I definitely prefer it to the Ranch houses that make up so many of the neighborhoods in California.

On its eastern end you will also find Jane Lathrop Middle School, which Herbert Hoover and most of the schools in the area, is outstanding.

Mitchell Park is next to the middle school. It has an outstanding set of tennis courts. There are several community resources in and around this area (some just to the south of Fairmeadow) which make this a great place to live in terms of community
activities like dance groups.

Okay so what does it cost to live in Fairmeadow?

I actually have no idea. People don’t seem to sell their homes in this neighborhood. Which suggests to me that it is a really stable neighborhood with long-time residents who are satisfied living here and don’t want to move.

If one ever does come up for sale, and I were in a family way and the situation was right, I would definitely love living here.

A lot of the streets in Fairmeadow, Palo Alto are known for their circular structure and classic California iconic houses. There is very little traffic in the area from outside drivers, it is mainly residential and the occasional local street traffic. The area is close to Mitchell Park which is great for family get togethers and also serves as the areas local schooling system. The street Romona Circle is known for hosting extravagant block parties during the summer months which include garage sales and grilling out events. For the most part the people are exceptionally warm and usually go out of their way to get to know each other.