A charming, shingled Craftsman in Palo Alto, California, is offering up a slice of rock ‘n’ roll history for $2.695 million.
The unassuming house in the Professorville neighborhood, a short walk from Stanford University’s campus, was rented by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in the late 1960s and early ’70s. According to Dennis McNally, author of “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead,” the home is where Dead frontman Jerry Garcia came up with the band’s moniker in 1965 while tripping on the hallucinogenic...
A charming, shingled Craftsman in Palo Alto, California, is offering up a slice of rock ‘n’ roll history for $2.695 million.
The unassuming house in the Professorville neighborhood, a short walk from Stanford University’s campus, was rented by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in the late 1960s and early ’70s. According to Dennis McNally, author of “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead,” the home is where Dead frontman Jerry Garcia came up with the band’s moniker in 1965 while tripping on the hallucinogenic DMT.
The band was also known to practice in its garage, which is still standing and now doubles as a studio. The two-bedroom, one-bathroom house hit the market in mid-May with Helen Lippert of Compass. It last sold in 2018 for $2.555 million, according to public records.
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“There is a vibe that you feel when you go into the house, and certainly when you go back into the garage,” Lippert said, adding that she’s become more of a fan of the Grateful Dead’s music while familiarizing herself with their catalog in the leadup to listing the home.
And what a history the property holds for Dead Heads. On that day in 1965, band members sat around proposing a few names that didn’t work, including Garcia’s suggestion of Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle, Palo Alto Online reported when the home was last up for sale. Then Garcia opened a copy of “Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard Dictionary” to a random page and stuck his finger down on a term, “grateful dead.” The name stuck.
“It confused some and appalled others—and what could be better for a rock band?” McNally wrote in the 2001 biography. “It implied layers and layers of depth, unique among all rock band names in that era, and suggested that something very powerful indeed happened on High Street that day.”
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It’s been about 50 years since Lesh lived in the house, but the home has been lovingly maintained since then, even as houses of half its 108-year age and of similar stature have been felled for larger homes, Lippert said.
An unusual perk for the area beyond its history, the house comes with a spacious pavered and fenced backyard where “you can just envision the music playing and people gathering,” Lippert added.
The current owners, who declined to be interviewed for this story but provided a written comment via email, put a new roof on the house last year and have done regular maintenance while retaining the home’s interior character, including its paneled dining nook and wood-burning fireplace.
“It is a difficult decision to sell this house,” sellers Sonya Saunder and Amrik Kang said in a statement. “In many ways, we started here just like the Grateful Dead. This was our first home in Palo Alto. We moved in with one child—we are leaving with two children, one au pair and many beautiful memories.”
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The sellers said they considered building a larger home to accommodate their family on the property, “but couldn’t bring ourselves to tear down a home with so much history and charm.”
They will, however, pass along the plans they had drawn up for a 2,425-square-foot four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom house with a nearly 750-square-foot accessory dwelling to the buyers.
Many of the people who have been calling about the property were connected to the Grateful Dead in their early days, Lippert said. Meanwhile, after a period of sellers’ remorse, Lippert said, the owners are ready to keep truckin’.
This article originally appeared on Mansion Global.