The Sunset of Sunset Magazine

Greetings!

It is an unusual time to be living in what is known generally as the Bay Area and frequently Silicon Valley.  If you know someone who has worked in high tech for awhile, it is entertaining to get their feedback on what they feel is the actual Capitol of Silicon Valley.  Some cities like to claim that title, individuals will disagree and point to famous garages in other locales.  But I digress.

It's hard to know exactly the boundaries of this Silicon Valley, but it has actual impacts on the land in the form of relentless construction of office space.

It is possible to observe a particularly ironic arc of history, which is the relocation of the headquarters of Sunset Magazine from its home in Menlo Park to Oakland.  Let's look at the history of Sunset magazine to understand why this is significant.

Sunset magazine was first begun in 1898 as a promotion tool by the Southern Pacific Railroad to entice people to get a train ticket and come West, to visit or live.  Stanford University has an excellent website on the history of this periodical, which you can view here: http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/sunset-magazine/index.html

Of particular interest is the essay by State Librarian Emeritus, Kenneth Staff, who is a living expert on California history.  Of Sunset magazine he writes,

"By the time that journey was nearing completion, in the flush and expectant years following the Second World War, Sunset: The Magazine of Western Living had become more than a magazine. It had become a key prism through which the people of the Far West were glimpsing the possibilities and futures of themselves and their region. Sunset entered the twentieth century primarily as a tourist magazine. Sunset ends the twentieth century as a Far Western institution, its Menlo Park headquarters a place of near-pilgrimage. Through 100 years of Sunset, the Far West, now expanded to include the Mountain states, Hawaii, and Alaska, had voiced, and continues to voice, its deepest hopes and dreams: its collective pursuit of happiness through an equally intense pursuit of the good life."

Sunset, packed with recipes and photographs, promising not just the good life but the delicious life.  The magazine, affordable and irresistible in its glossy pages and promise of social ease through good recipes and beautiful homes and gardens, also became a mainstay in popular culture by expanding into books, guides and cookbooks, including the famous  Western Garden Book of Landscaping.

Will there ever be a periodical more connected to a particular social and geographical movement that came to define a lifestyle, that, real or imagined, placed California firmly in the minds of so many in different parts of the country?

Will there ever be a title so famous to be so quietly and surreptitiously dislodged from its actual home? For Sunset has been dislocated, giving up its famed Menlo Park home, or perhaps kicked out?  I don't have the whole story, but you can get a whiff of the transaction here:

http://www.sunset.com/garden/landscaping-design/sunset-garden-tour

In case this link is also "relocated" the relevant content is this:

"The gardens at 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA are no longer open for self-guided walking tours, as we are boxing up our office in preparation for our dual moves to Oakland’s Jack London Square and Sonoma’s Cornerstone. The last date tours were open to the public were October 30, 2015. We hope you come visit us in our new digs!

Sunset's headquarters sits upon land that was originally part of a grant to Don José Arguello, governor of Spanish California in 1815. The early-California-style buildings that house our offices reflect that influence. They were designed by Cliff May, father of the California ranch-style home, to bridge indoor and outdoor living spaces. The main building opened in 1952.

The original Sunset display garden was designed by Thomas Church, the dean of Western landscape architects. It included a border that followed the contours of San Francisquito Creek, with distinct areas representing the major climate zones of the West, from the deserts of Arizona and Southern California to the cold, wet areas of the Northwest."

While many things could be said about the ongoing adaptation of Sunset, and the heavy blanket of irony that a magazine that itself could  be held partially accountable for the stampede of immigrants that did unholy things to the landscape of the West can also be uprooted, it is still a painful bit of irony that this inventor of California history is walking away from the site of its many sources, in particular the gardens and the architecture of Cliff May.

Local business reporter Nate Donato Weinstein reported back in 2014 that, "Pricing was still sketchy late Wednesday, but several sources told me it was expected to sell for more than $1,000 per square foot, which would peg the value at at least $77 million. One source estimated the deal in the range of $1,200 per square foot, but the number couldn't be verified."  This information is from an article posted at:  http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/12/11/sunset-magazine-property-sells-to-embarcadero.html

Recent local periodicals and websites report that the headquarters of Sunset are moving to Oakland,
so the magazine that originally was designed to lure people West is decamping to the East Bay.

The present state of popular periodicals has some parallels to the departure of Sunset's headquarters:  moving from a very stable and known past into a future that has equal numbers of threats and opportunities.  I thought to myself a few days ago about the presence of free newspaper racks that appear on some corners as well as the demise of so many bookstores that once offered hundreds of periodicals.  Will Sunset also fade or will it continue on its long trajectory and find a new route to conquer?

Yours to ponder.  But if you'd like to see the real deal, please visit SJSU Special Collections and Archives on the 5th floor of King Library, where we have the back issues from volume 4.