• Frank C. Havens house
• R. H. Briggs house, Library addition
• Leon L. Roos house
• Randolph School, Flora B. Randolph
• Samuel Goslinsky house
• R. Fry house
• A. W. Thomas house
• L. P. Dyer house
• E. B. Power house
• Percy L. Shuman house
• Abbreviations

Frank C. Havens, the real estate developer of the subdivisions in which the Schneider and Senger houses were built, liked Maybeck's treatment of hillside sites, and in 1908 he asked Maybeck to design his own residence in neighboring Piedmont where he owned property. The site, which included a steep canyon studded with large California Live Oak trees, had its best building area lying fifteen feet below the level of the access road. Maybeck seleted the spot for his design and arranged the plan to overcome the difficult grade condiitions by entering the house at the second-story level. Although the house has been remodeled, a small bridge still spans the space from the entrance drive to the building where the entry once opened into a spacious hall. The hall led to bedrooms and a large deck bordering its south side. An open stairwell descended to the living and dining rooms below. The steepness of the site and the bridged entrance permitted all living spaces to be above ground. The living room still opens to a southern outdoor balcony which covers the terrace of the game room later developed as the lowest story. In addition to the main house, Maybeck designed servants' quarters above a garage for six cars, and it, too, was connected to the service element of the house by a bridge that spanned a minor lateral of the principal canyon.

Mr. and Mrs. Havens were in the East for an extended stay during the construction of the house, and Maybeck carried on a regular correspondence with them to inform them of the building's progress. In addition to technical and business details, he expressed his ideas on the relationship of a house, its owners, and its furnishing. "We believe that when you have seen the house and become accustomed to it," he wrote, "there will be a thousand and one ideas come rushing to your mind to complete it...We therefore are getting an idea of the cost of things and when you have decided what you will do to put life into the rooms, you will make such a success of it that the thing as a whole will have that interest and personality which even as a plain business proposition will be a good investment...We also were under the impression that you could get your own personality into your house better if we stopped at the building proper, so as to leave you unhampered in the final work of furnishings. (Note 11: B.R. Maybeck MSS, "F.C. Havens," C.E.D.Docs.) (Cardwell 1977: 106).

Mrs. Havens' interest centered on East Indian and Oriental artifacts, and while some of the carving which exists in the house was incorporated in the design by Maybeck, the major portion of the work was executed at a later date by East Indian craftsmen transported by Mrs. Havens from the Orient. At that time the house was virtually rebuilt. Maybeck's great living hall had rooms added in its lofty reaches, and redwood beams and surfaces were replaced by teak. Oriental details and complete rooms were imported to add to the structure. Leila Havens applied Maybeck's advice with such effectiveness that all that remains of Maybeck's design is the plan scheme, the proportions of the living room, and a few exterior details. (Note 12:F.C. Havens was a major client for whom Maybeck did not do repeat work. It appears that Maybeck's experiment with a concrete fireplace failed to draw properly and led to the invention of his "venturi chimney cap" which became a design characteristic after 1908.)(Cardwell 1977: 107).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Maybeck's own brand of English Tudor> lavished on a major house (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 39).

Maybeck's most lavish city residence, for which he designed all the interior appointments including furniture. The half-timbered English Tudor mode is enlivened by Maybeck's personalized Gothic details in the roof brackets and balcony railing (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 99).

Maybeck's first dozen years of practice, up to about 1908, established the tone of his career. For several years thereafter, he attained greater synthesis with the buildings that would eventually make him famous: the Chick and Roos houses, the First Church of Christ Scientist, and the Palace of Fine Arts. Each of these projects, in a different way, offered a masterful resolution, but this time period was an interlude. For the remainder of his long career, the search continued, often in a more fragmentary vein (Longstreth 1998: 354).

On the northwest corner of Laurel and Jackson is Maybeck's striking masterpiece, the Roos House (45) (1909). The house was given to Elizabeth Roos by her father, the owner of the Opheum Theatre Company. Roos also owned the Roos Brothers clothing store. The house appears modest in size but is actually 9,000 square feet. Designed in the Tudor style, it features fantastically carved ornamental woodwork on the exterior, a forest of redwood paneling inside, and numerous light fixtures, lanterns, and fireplaces designed by Maybeck. Even the foundation--a lattice of heavy wooden beams attached to wooden piles to secure the house in an earthquake--is an original (Wiley 2000: 279).

The evolution of Maybeck's personal forms could be seen in the Roos and Goslinsky houses in San Francisco, both built in 1909. The emphasis was still on the roof, but there was greater concentration of forms, and ornament was developed on wall surfaces and balcony rails (McCoy 1975: 15-16).

Maybeck's most urbane residence was the half-timbered house for department store owner Leon L. Roos, San Francisco, 1909.

Double doors covered with antique amethyst velvet were set into wide panels of redwood in the entrance hall of the Roos house. Screens of redwood and velvet--which closed off the living room from the hall--slid into a pocket in the wall (McCoy 1975: 17).

But not all owners desired to devote time and energy in the furnishing of their houses, and when Maybeck was asked by a client to select or design furniture, he did so readily. Such was the case in building the Leon L. Roos house (1909) near San Francisco's Presidio Heights, an area which, even before the fire, had seen many large and expensive residences constructed in fine materials and academic styles. Maybeck chose to use Tudor forms and details, and while at first glance there seems to be little relation between the Roos design and his earlier Gothic houses, there are many similarities.

Maybeck articulated the spaces of the Roos house following the pattern he had used for the [Laura G.] Hall house. A one-story living room is joined by an entry hall to a two-story block containing the dining room and kitchen areas with bedrooms on its second floor. Each block is surmounted by a steeply pitched gable roof, tiled in slate, which allows a richly timbered truss over the living area and provides space for servants' quarters in the attic over the bedrooms. The basement level is used for utility, storage, and recreation rooms. The townhouse is unique with its handsome level portico and graceful skylighted entry hall, and contrasts with the columned porches and formal entries of nearby residences. (Note 13: Over the years Maybeck made several changes and additions to the Roos house. The last and most extensive was in 1926. At that time the principal staircase was modified, a small second-story living space was added, and additional rooms were developed in the attic story.)

The living areas are well proportioned and handsomely detailed. The large spaces are composed around strong axial lines, and the smaller areas, designed for intimate occasions, add interest and delight to the overall design. Panels of mauve plush edged with gold gimp harmonize with redwood walls. Redwood battens and moldings have Gothic profiles. Indirect lighting and diffused light from wall fixtures softly illuminate surfaces and details, while hanging chandeliers sparkle against the dark heights of the roof timbering. Tables of dark oak and chairs cushioned with rose velvet supplement the furnishings selected from the owner's collection of medieval pieces. Wall coverings, light fixtures, and furniture--even the heraldic crest of the owner's initial ornamenting the entrance door--were fashioned from designs by Maybeck.

The Roos house is the largest of the townhouses that Maybeck designed. The trussed rafters of the living room rise to a height of thirty feet at the ridge, and their horizontal ties penetrate the roof in a manner similar to those of the Outdoor Art Club. The steep gable of the two-storied section paralleling the street is complicated by the addition of low-pitched roofs, projecting balconies, dormers, and wide eaves which are supported by cantilevered beams and post brackets ornamented by carved quatrefoils. And, although the walls are treated in a strong rectangular pattern of plaster and half timbers, the various angles of the roof planes and the projecting and retreating surfaces of the minor architectural details create an erratic exterior.

The Roos house was constructed on a gridwork of beams fastened to wooden piles driven into the hillside. Although there is no record to indicate why Maybeck employed a foundation system unusual for residential construction, it is probable that he selected it to mitigate any possible damage by earthquakes. One of the oldest San Francisco masonry buildings to withstand the earth tremors had been built on a similar system, and the only damage suffered by wooden-framed structures in 1906 had been caused by sliding from foundations. (Note 14: Cf. Washington Block (Montgomery Block), San Francisco, 1853, G.P. Cummings, architect, which was constructed on pilings and a grid beam footing.) In any event, the firm and flexible bearing assured adequate ground anchorage, and Maybeck avoided the great bulk of foundation work that is commonly found in large San Francisco hillside houses (Cardwell 1977: 108-109).

The chair in the center foreground is one piece of an upholstered set designed by Maybeck for the owners. The doors and transom panels are covered with a mauve cut plush. The push plates and lighting fixtures were also designed by Maybeck (Cardwell 1977: 111).

[Maybeck agreed with] what [Louis] Sullivan had said, "you cannot produce a living architecture as a system of applied logic. Architecture is Life-Poetry. The logic is something not to be caught by intellectual machinery. Architecture is the imprint of a greater logic of Man and Nature which no smart brain can take apart and make simple--its simplicity is already profound."²

The house that Maybeck designed in 1909 for the Leon L. Roos family (plate 112) was definitely Life-Poetry. In Mrs. Roos, Maybeck had a client whose interest in theater paralleled his own. The house was a wedding present from her father, Morris Meyerfeld, who was a partner in the Orpheum Theater Circuit company. He had taken Elizabeth Leslie with him when he traveled to Europe in search of talent, and these tours gave her a lasting enthusiasm for the theater and for theatricality. When she heard that Mr. Maybeck designed theatrical houses, she rejected the architect her father had chosen and hired Maybeck.

At about 9,000 square feet, this is Maybeck's largest San Francisco residence. It has two distinct sections: a two-story front part with dining room (plate 116), entrance hall, kitchen, and service spaces on the ground floor and bedrooms above; and a back part with only one floor but nearly the same height as the front part--the back part contains the great two-story living hall, the largest room in the house. Though difficult to ignore for other reasons, the house does not immediately reveal its considerable size. Instead of the grand entrance typical of mansions of the time, the front door is at the end of the loggia on the east side of the house, and it is not visible from the street. Even before a garage and an upper-level room were added to the west side, the facade was asymmetrical; its focus is the balcony off the second-story bedroom and the elaborate dormer above (plate 114). Here Maybeck put his early experience in furniture design to use in an idiosyncratic composition that transforms the projecting bedroom into a giant cabinet. "Fanciful" is not quite the right word to convey the effect of this composition, although there is a certain whimsy to the face detectable in the quatrefoil eyes under heavy brows. No one played with trefoils, quatrefoils, and other Gothic ornament with more verve than Maybeck; few other architects dared to combine different stylistic details so freely or to alter their effects by using them in untraditional materials.

The east side of the house (plate 115), which follows the steep slope of the site, reveals its large mass. Perhaps with some help from the engineer Herman Kower, Maybeck designed a latticed foundation of heavy wooden beams attached to wooden piles driven into the hillside. The purpose of this raftlike foundation was to permit the house to rock with the movement of the earth during a quake and to obviate the need for the high, fortresslike foundation walls that are typical of other large hillside buildings in San Francisco neighborhoods. Structurally integrated with the hillside, the house does seem to grow out of its site. When the full complement of house and gardens existed, the house certainly met the Hillside Club's standards. Orginally the gounds extended behind the house to encompass a formal vegetable garden designed by Maybeck. Although this garden has vanished, other of his landscape elements--clipped hedges and shrubbery that soften the base, trellised vines, and planters filled with geraniums--still contribute to the picturesque qualities of this grand but informal mansion.

The Roos family, like Phoebe Hearst, entertained frequently and formally. Their guests would approach the house through the loggia, which serves as an open foyer, and enter the low-ceilinged, skylit entry. From this point the sequence of spaces along the lengthy north-south axis is visible. The passage from the dining room at the front to the secondary living room, or alcove, at the back (plate 118) is also a progression from the closed and private street side to the more open garden side. The low-ceilinged alcove is a setting for contemplation of the view through the large window overlooking the Presidio grounds and Marin County across the bay. While the guests proceeded into the living hall (plate 119), the hosts would descend from the upper floor by means of a stair hidden behind a wall and appear on a stagelike landing to greet those assembled in the hall. The landing, raised four steps above floor level, forms one end of a cross axis anchored on the opposite side of the room by a cast-stone fireplace that rises to the ceiling. After making an initial appearance, the hosts would usually stand by the hearth and receive their guests less formally. Dr. Jane Roos, who inherited the house in the late 1970s, recalls that she first saw her mother-in-law dressed in a tea gown, standing by the fireplace.

The Rooses had a wonderful time living a baronial life. Leon Roos (who was an owner of Roos Brothers, one of San Francisco's major men's furnishing stores) designed a family crest (plate 120) and commissioned furniture from Maybeck to complement the pieces they purchased in Europe and elsewhere. Maybeck's massive armchairs and couch, their ends inset with giant quatrefoils, effectively frame a social area by the fireplace (plate 121). Silken banners from Europe hung from standards set in holders that Maybeck designed for them (plate 122). (By the 1970s the banners had all but rotted away and were removed.) Clusters of lights suspended at slightly different heights from branching metal ceiling fixtures glow like fireflies. Similar to the lights that Maybeck had devised for Hearst Hall and was to use again in the First Church of Christ, Scientist, they help to set a human scale. Maybeck referred to them as "atmospheric lights"--an aptly theatrical term for their effect on the room's character. The lights and the banners served to veil but not conceal the low-pitched gable ceiling, twenty-five feet high at the ridge, that caps the space. For all its grandeur, the hall never dwarfs its occupants.

The use of redwood for the whole room distances this hall from the historicist half-timbered style popularized by designers in the mainstream of the Arts and Crafts movement. Redwood paneling set in modules of three establishes a spatial rhythm. The uneven number of modules on the long walls establishes a continuous rhythm sympathetic to the direction of the hall's main axis; the symmetry of the end walls, which have seven modules, balances this rhythm with stasis and gives a feeling of completion to the room as a whole. Filling one section of the wall, the mantelpiece of cast plaster and concrete tinted to mimic stone is a mélange of Tudorish detail. Although it commands attention from those in the room, the mantelpiece does not project so far into the space that it detracts from the total view of the room from the entrance hall.

Maybeck added a garden room on the southeastern corner in 1913 and a garage in 1916. Leon Roos owned one of the first gasoline-powered automobiles in California, a grand open touring car that served the family unexpectedly well by transporting them to San Jose in the aftermath of the earthquake. Garaged elsewhere at first, the car was eventually kept under the house, where a mechanical turntable was installed so that it could be turned around and driven forward out to the street. The turntable finally rotted away and has been replaced with a commemorative circle of concrete. A second-floor dressing room was added in 1919 and an upstairs study in 1926. Well lit by large windows, this informal living room has one of Maybeck's fanciful fireplaces, a concoction of polychrome Renaissance detail complemented by andiron that match its free spirit (plate 123). The board-and-batten ceiling strikes a rustic note echoed in a series of delightful lanterns with sides of knotted-silk cords (plate 124). (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 129-37, 229).

A Jackson Street mansion that combines grace, grandeur and warmth is the Roos home at 3500 Jackson. The incomparable Maybeck achieved this tour de force in 1909, when merchant Leon Roos and his nineteen-year-old bride set out for a honeymoon in Europe, leaving the architect with a commission but no nagging supervision. The result was an exuberantly free interpretation of the old English half-timbered style with Gothic overtones. The Gothic influence is seen in the carved quatrefoils supporting the cornice, and the geometric tracery of the balustrade to the left of the entrance. Maybeck's interest in decorative carving is attributable to his father, a professional wood carver, and themes shown in the carvings of the Roos house run through much of his work.

Maybeck often employed heavy decorative woodwork in the form of large projecting beams, elaborate brackets, heavy cornices, and such, and the surest indication of his mastery of the technique was that this essentially decorative work usually did not appear to be merely "tacked on."

The interior of the house is finished in Maybeck's favorite rubbed redwood. There are the usual, functional Maybeck touches--a picture window that hinges so that both sides can be cleaned from inside the house and folding doors as room dividers. (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 149-50).

Designed as a school and now a private residence. The village-like collection of steep-roofed classroom pavilions opening on terraces presented a planning concept in advance of the times (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 277).

Randolph School, Berkeley, 1910. The 60-degree roof pitch was repeated in the gate structure and the post caps. In the kitchen of the school was a scissor truss, similar to the one seen here.

Interior view of Randolph School, now a private residence. The school represented a new concept in floor planning; classrooms faced terraces on three sides (McCoy 1975: 14).

The [Randolph School]... had three separate 60-degree roofs turned at angles to each other, like a group of three small school houses. The exterior was the result of a fresh approach to plan; each classroom opened on three sides to the garden (McCoy 1975: 15).

Even while he was designing the ornate Roos house, he was giving a small, unadorned school house equal attention.

The project, a small private school for Miss Flora Randolph, was built in 1909 on Berkeley's Belrose Avenue. In later years Maybeck tried without success to obtain a commission for a public school building, and during his efforts he set down his ideas about school design, which are of more than passing interest. In his notes Maybeck advocates "small houses" with separate outdoor spaces for individual classes to be added to as the community grew. These classroom buildings were to be connected by outdoor covered corridors (in California) and heated by radiant heating in their concrete floors. Interestingly, the proposals when read today define recent California school design. Maybeck's lack of success in obtaining commissions from school boards that were looking for a school specialist kept them from erecting the kind of building that was to become standard architectural practice a generation later.

These ideas grew out of his design for the Randolph School. In this building there were no isolated circulation elements, but there was an attempt to give each classroom its own expression and its own garden space. As a private institution serving a limited number of pupils, it must have had a special delight to children as they studied in one of the individual "houses" or made their way through the general assembly to the special purpose areas. The building now serves as a residence and, even thus modified, its ordered jumble of volumes is pleasant. Maybeck used steep, shingle roofs to cover his classrooms and, through standard dormer framing, introduced clerestory windows. The utter simplicity of the shingle walls, roofs without overhangs, and plain board and batten interiors is naive and refreshing (Cardwell 1977: 114).

Now a residence (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

The evolution of Maybeck's personal forms could be seen in the Roos and Goslinsky houses in San Francisco, both built in 1909. The emphasis was still on the roof but there was greater concentration of forms, and ornament was developed on wall surfaces and balcony rails.

Three-and-one-half-story Goslinsky house, San Francisco, 1909, on a 25-foot lot. Here Maybeck's personal forms--which arose out of plan and a desire for adequate daylighting--dominated Gothic revival and Bay Region shingle influences. The house cost $6800.

Detail of the Goslinsky house, showing flamboyant Gothic tracery in a screen for a window, and a Byzantine downspout in copper. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 97, McCoy 1975: 15-17).

Another townhouse, built in 1909 for Samuel Goslinsky, is located in the 3200 block of Pacific Avenue. Here, houses built during the decade by Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, and Maybeck combine to form the image of the urban street scene that the newcomers had urged as the norm of design for San Francisco. Their range of forms and styles, unified by their shingled exteriors, is fascinating. Maybeck's Goslinsky house, sheathed in shingles and roofed with slates, presents in its exterior details a strange combination of forms which belies the refinement and graciousness of its interiors.

The house is entered from the street through the side of a boxlike vestibule. Its shed roof slopes on a diagonal parallel to the uphill site. Within the entry, a circular staircase rises to the main living areas. From the top of the stair the garden terrace behind the house is viewed along an oblique line extending through the lengths of the living and dining rooms. Maybeck's use of skewed and extended sight lines expands the width of the interior space unexpectedly within the narrow confines of its twenty-five foot frontal dimension. At a later date the doors of the entry were shifted from the side of the vestibule to its front in order to accommodate a garage in the basement. Maybeck's records do not indicate whether or not he was responsible for the change; but the general character of the house remains unaltered (Cardwell 1977: 112).

The mirrored doors of the casework extend the visual space of the room. There is nothing in the Maybeck documents which would indicate that the flush lighting panels are part of the original design (Cardwell 1977: 113).

Bernard Maybeck, the most resourceful of the Bay Area's residential architects and the unsurpassed master in the handling of shingled houses and decorative detailing, designed the house at 3233 Pacific Avenue built for Samuel Goslinsky in 1909. In some respects this house resembles a country house shipped in pieces from France. But more properly it is a pure Maybeck romance.

The accompanying photograph shows details of the entrance (which has a roof separate from that of the house), the handsome Gothic windows, the lovely gutter drain, the bold cornice setting off the rich but repetitious texzture of the shingles. The main house behind the entrance is three stories, and has a steeply-pitched, hipped roof with the cornice line broken in a most unusual way (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 144, 145, 149).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Location and condition unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Altered (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Location unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

A subtle composition in staggered roof planes and voids where the balcony and entrance stair occur. Maybeck's deft touch in a modest shingled house (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 131).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Interior altered by Jack Hilmer, 1980s (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

One of the finer Maybeck residences in this city is situated in the Haight-Ashbury District. This rustic home, at 1526 Masonic Avenue, sits in striking contrast to its neighbors. Built in 1910 for E. B. Power, then Assistant Attorney General of California, its exterior is simple in form and detail. The only exterior motif is the arrowhead design, symbolizing Mr. Power's great interest in the American Indian, used in the shutter of a gable window.

This simplicity leaves one unprepared for Maybeck's interior: massive beams, natural redwood paneling, infinitely-detailed joinings, a mammoth fireplace and the inspiring two-story, cathedral-ceilinged living room. Other interior details normally supplied by Maybeck were designed to the Powers' specifications: copper hardware and fixtures replace the usual brass and a series of three triangular shapes for decoration appears instead of Maybeck's diamond pattern (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 130).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 242).

Location and condition unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 230).

Abbreviations