Stately and serene - visiting the campus of University of Santa Clara - Brief Article

At 150, Santa Clara University is still a sanctuary in the heart of Silicon Valley

Stepping onto the Santa Clara University campus in 1880, Italian consul S.B. Cerruti declared that the tiny Jesuit school had to be "the most beautiful college in the entire California." His English may not have been perfect, but Cerruti couldn't have said it any better. The landscape around Santa Clara University has changed considerably since it first opened, with vineyards and olive orchards giving way to the office buildings of Silicon Valley, but one can still see a "beautiful college" on the campus today.

Established on the grounds of the Mission Santa Clara de Asis in 1851--a full 47 years before the founding of nearby Stanford University--Santa Clara University has always felt like a haven of sorts. This is no coincidence. The university's Jesuit founders created the school to provide a stabilizing education for young people growing up in the turbulence of the Gold Rush. Even now, as the university celebrates its sesquicentennial this month, California's oldest institution of higher learning continues to feel like a sanctuary-now, from the modern-day gold rush of microchips and e-commerce.

Alumni and visitors alike are invited to celebrate on the campus's wide lawns during the Grand Anniversary Weekend, June 22 through 24. Garden parties, reunion picnics, and live music will be in no short supply, along with free guided walking tours. Or you can visit at another time, reveling in what still might be considered one of the most beautiful colleges in California.

The crown jewel of the Santa Clara campus is the Mission Church. Originally constructed in 1822, the church endured decades of retrofitting during the Victorian era before burning down in 1926. It was rebuilt in 1928 to resemble the original mission and continues to command the center of campus with its Spanish colonial facade. Inside, beneath the painted ceiling, it's easy to picture the mission as it was in the early 1800s-a lonely bastion of the Old World in an undeveloped land.

On one side of the Mission Church are the university's celebrated rose bushes; on the other are the gardens. Enter beneath the dangling purple blooms of the school's 100-year-old wisteria arbor and take in the far-flung melange of flowers, from jacaranda to a rare Abyssinian musk rose.

To round out your tour of the campus, stop in at the de Saisset Museum across from the mission. Through the end of June, an exhibit features one of the area's historical figures, Father Bernard Hubbard, who was known as the Glacier Priest.

Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA; (408) 554-4000 or www.scu.edu.Mission Santa Clara: sunrise-sunset daily; 554-4023. De Saisset Museum: 11-4 Tue-Sun; free; 554-4528.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Sunset Publishing Corp.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group