Palo Alto Stock Farm Horse Barn

Before Stanford University welcomed its first students, Leland Stanford bred and trained trotting horses on the land that became its campus. The Palo Alto Stock Farm Horse Barn, better known as the Stanford Red Barn, served as the farm’s training stable. Built between 1878 and 1880, the two-story barn has red siding, white trim, and a central cupola that helped draw warm air up from the stalls below.

The farm also played a role in the history of photography. Leland Stanford hired photographer Eadweard Muybridge to settle a question too fleeting for the human eye. Did a trotting horse ever lift all four hooves off the ground at once? Muybridge’s sequence of photographs captured the moment it did.

One of only two surviving buildings from the original stock farm, the Red Barn joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It still houses horses at Stanford’s equestrian center.