We had instructions for finding parking on campus. They led us to the track house, outside the nice new-looking track facility.
The nearby tennis stadium had considerably more miles on it, but it had a public restroom.
Stanford has a tower, too. Not nearly as tall as the tower at UT, or probably even Rice's Campanile, but it is open to visitors. Too bad the tower closed before we got around to visiting it.
Traditional arched walkways are a featured motif in Stanford's architecture, making it look just like a university.
The Stanford campus features many Rodin sculptures. These two are part of a larger set standing in the quad. (The camera exposed for the wall; I tried to bring out some shadow detail by brightening the image. That's why it looks so washed-out.)
At the prominent top end of the quad is this church. The tourguide took pains to point out that the presence of this church on campus doesn't mean that Stanford is a religious school, but fell short of true political correctness by listing various Christian denominations and implying that this spanned all possible beliefs. As you can see, the building's decorations are about as Christian as they could be. It is a beautiful building, in a showy sort of way.
There's the tower again, across the main quad. Since no real summer sessions happen at Stanford, the campus was relatively deserted. There was still quite a bit of activity, but no crowds in the quad.
This is looking away from the church, toward the main entrance to campus (I think).
One side of the campus is "techie" (science/math/etc.) and the other is "fuzzy" (liberal arts and soft sciences). This is looking toward the fuzzy side from the main quad.
We had a few minutes inside the church building. It was a challenge to photograph with simple equipment, and I didn't really have time to try anything fancy. It was bigger than this picture makes it look. Ellen commented that it out-gaudied the 1st Presby in Orange.
There are three pipe organs in the place. This is a (blurry) view up into the organ loft, at the back of the sanctuary.
In front of the church (under the arches) are these class plaques. Here you see the first one, from the class of 1892. They have room for about 1500 of these, so future classes needn't worry about not getting a plaque. Later plaques are actually time capsules.
Yet another arch.
Yet another nearly-empty quad with arched walkways.
Peeking at some building through some archway. The tourguide didn't spend a lot of time identifying buildings as we walked around campus. Mainly she just gave a general orientation talk while we walked.
On the techie side of campus, Paul spotted these antennas, which appear to be an amateur radio satellite groundstation. That probably means this is the building where the small satellite program is going on at Stanford.
Here's a modern-looking building.
This one caught my eye with neat reflections in the windows.
This artifact was mounted on the rear of one of the main engineering buildings. It appears to be a sundial calendar, or something of that nature.
The other end of said engineering building. Plain utilitarian architecture here.
The Stanford Chaparral's balcony. That's the humor magazine, published sporadically by students. The main paper (daily during the year, weekly during the summer) is also a student-run organization.
Yet another expanse of quad.
This fountain is in front of the bookstore, and throws a cool mist downwind. This was not especially welcome, since even without the mist the weather was cool (comfortable for Paul, freezing for Julie, and this is July).
Here's our tourguide giving the final bits of lecture on the lawn in front of the bookstore.
Ellen listens from the shadows.
Julie listens from closer to the front.
Does this look like a friendly audience?
Art, I suppose.
Yet another fountain.
Here's some undoubted art, made of stainless steel. Paul ran aside to shoot this while Ellen and Julie were concentrating on trudging toward the car.
Copyright 1999 Paul Williamson