• Byington Ford house
• Frances Potter Thomas house, add., rem.
• Camp Curry kitchen add.
• Ira B. Joralemon house and studio
• Mary D. Loy (W. E. Chamberlain) house
• General Plan and buildings, Principia College
• Alma S. Kennedy studio, rebuilding
• Orin Kip McMurray house
• E.F. Geisler house
• J. H. Burnett house
• Abbreviations

Maybeck's work in Pebble Beach did not meet with much success. A private school, proposed by the Del Monte Properties Company, for which Maybeck had been hired to do preliminary studies, was abandoned. And although the Byington Ford house (1922) and additions to the F. P. Thomas> house (1922) were built, little remains of Maybeck's work. The Ford house has been remodeled beyond recognition and only the small Thomas addition remains to exhibit the simplicity of structural expression found in Maybeck's early work (Cardwell 1977: 183).

Altered (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 234).

Maybeck's work in Pebble Beach did not meet with much success. A private school, proposed by the Del Monte Properties Company, for which Maybeck had been hired to do preliminary studies, was abandoned. And although the Byington Ford house (1922) and additions to the F. P. Thomas house (1922) were built, little remains of Maybeck's work. The Ford house has been remodeled beyond recognition and only the small Thomas addition remains to exhibit the simplicity of structural expression found in Maybeck's early work (Cardwell 1977: 183).

Additions and remodeling. Location and condition unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 234).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 245).

Kitchen additions. Condition unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 234).

Built immediately after the 1923 fire, this house of semi-fireproof materials has an interesting plan in which the entrance is a "hyphen" between the house and a studio (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 252).

After the 1923 fire Maybeck seldom used wood in the Berkeley hills; he began to develop a style in stucco and tile. The Jeralemon(sic) and the McMurray houses, both built immediately after the fire, were important not only for their plastic forms of semi-fireproof materials but also for inventive plan and detail. The entrance to the Jeralemon (sic) house was a hyphen between the main house and a studio. Both houses had combined living and dining rooms, and were the first houses with ranges set into the kitchen work counters (McCoy 1975: 50).

In talking to Dorothy Joralemon about the design of the Joralemons' house in 1923, Maybeck said that too much architecture was sober and drab, and he asked if she would prefer "a white house resembling a bird that has just dropped down on your hilltop, or an earth-colored one that seems to rise out of it." (Note 1: Dorothy Rieber Joralemon, "Memories of Bernard Maybeck, 1923: From the Journal of Dorothy Rieber Joralemon," 1977; manuscript given to the author by Mrs. Joralemon.) When she chose the latter, Maybeck invited her to participate in the process of spattering the walls with colored stucco. Four pails of wet stucco were prepared, each tinted with a different hue--pale chrome yellow, deep ocher, Venetian red, and gray--and each painter was given a whisk broom with which to flick the stucco onto the walls. Maybeck directed the operation like a maestro: "Red here. Ochre there. Now lighten with yellow. Now soften with gray." When the job was finished, he announced approvingly that the walls vibrated (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 10; Cardwell 1977: 245).

In talking to Dorothy Joralemon about the design of the Joralemons' house in 1923, Maybeck said that too much architecture was sober and drab, and he asked if she would prefer "a white house resembling a bird that has just dropped down on your hilltop, or an earth-colored one that seems to rise out of it."¹ When she chose the latter, Maybeck invited her to participate in the process of spattering the walls with colored stucco. Four pails of wet stucco were prepared, each tinted with a different hue--pale chrome yellow, deep ocher, Venetian red, and gray--and each painter was given a whisk broom with which to flick the stucco onto the walls. Maybeck directed the operation like a maestro: "Red here. Ochre there. Now lighten with yellow. Now soften with gray." When the job was finished, he announced approvingly that the walls vibrated.

Maybeck achieved a similarly atmospheric effect in the Joralemon house, built just before the 1923 fire, by spattering walls with different colors, using the Impressionists' pointillist technique (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 10, 162, 234).

The dragon device was used in Wyntoon, the Faculty Club, Outdoor Art Club, Flagg studio, Owens house, Tufts house (San Rafael), Kennedy studio, and the [Mary D. Loy] Chamberlain studio (Cardwell 1977: 125).

Demolished (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 234).

The campus was built at Elsah, Illinois with Julia Morgan as supervising architect and Maybeck as design consultant. The basic designs developed for the st. Louis campus were modified for the actual construction (Cardwell 1977: 206).

Of the several plans for college campuses, company towns, and other large-scale developments that Maybeck designed, the only one that was carried out was for the campus and buildings of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, which he worked on at the end of his career, from 1930 to 1938, in association with Julia Morgan.

The work during this phase of Maybeck's career reflected a change in his practice. With the receipt of large-scale commissions in the early 1920s from [Earle C.] Anthongy, Principia College, and William Randolph Hearst, Maybeck had to choose either to enlarge his office staff considerably and assume greater business responsibilities or to reduce his involvement in this aspect of the practice by associating with other architects who would do the working drawings and specifications and manage the construction process. Given his artistic temperament, the latter course was a logical choice; it enabled him to be the maestro orchestrating the special effects that increasingly captivated him. Contracts for Maybeck's contribution from this time on refer to it as "art work," a term that he never defined but that clearly meant the aesthetic aspects of the design.

For Principia College, which occupied Maybeck from 1923 to 1938, he made plans for two sites: one in East Saint Louis, Illinois, and the other for Elsah, Illinois, where the college was finally built. The reorganization of his practice, which delegated management of the construction process to associated architects, resulted in the designation of Julia Morgan as supervising architect for the college and Maybeck as design consultant. In 1938 he withdrew from the project altogether, leaving Julia Morgan and Henry Gutterson to carry on the work. Maybeck was then seventy-six and, understandably, could no longer keep up with a large project so far from home. (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 9, 173, 214, 216, 236).

Spanish tile and stucco blend with Gothic detail in this colorful double residence linked by a bridge. The split gable roof, replaced after the fire, originally terminated in trellis work and provided a skylight which ran the length of the ridge (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 256-57).

An idiosyncratic mix of Mediterranean and Gothic elements enhanced by vivid colors, the recital hall with attached home replaced a studio that burned in 1923 (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 211).

Maybeck looked for various ways to "age" stucco walls. He threw pails of muddy water onto new walls; he graduated their color from light to dark, with darker tones up under the eaves. The walls of the Lawson porches were once a Roman red; the dome of the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts is still a velvety burnt orange; the walls of the Kennedy house in Berkeley have a sunset glow in their various earth colors (McCoy 1975: 18).

The Kennedy house, Berkeley, 1923, had a curved street-front wall and ramp. To give the concrete a mellowness of age the walls were colored in tones graduating from soft peach to burnt orange (McCoy 1975: 50).

The dragon device was used in Wyntoon, the Faculty Club, Outdoor Art Club, Flagg studio, Owens house, Tufts house (San Rafael), Kennedy studio, and the Chamberlain studio among others (Cardwell 1977: 125).

The Alma Schmidt Kennedy studio (1914) for voice and concert performances combines Gothic ornament with classical lines and adds to the diverse forms that Maybeck had built on the Buena Vista hillside. On a corner lot, difficult to build on because of its limited size and steep slope, Maybeck joined a high studio room to a two-storied living unit under a cross-gable roof. An enticing walled walk from the principal street curves its way around the corner of the building to arrive at the entrance vestibule of the living unit a half-story below the studio level. The gabled end of the concert room dominates the composition--its beamed overhangs are cut back to the wall surface near the ridge point, accenting a large window. A lancet window, a deck railed with cusped roundels, and half-timbering reinforce the Gothic imagery and suggest verticality, but low-pitched roofs and horizontal lines balance the composition.

Stucco in tones of terra cotta, umber and warm gray, and painted wood in blues, greens, and carmine combine with a red tile roof in a color scheme more harmonious than its description. The studio was heavily damaged by fire in 1923 but it was reconstructed in nearly the same form with the exception of the roof which originally was shingled and had overhangs ending in lacy trelliage. The interior of the studio is furnished in natural redwood and simply detailed built-in casework. The plan is functionally arranged to take advantage of the split levels by using the dining and bedroom spaces of the living unit for overflow audience seating during public recitals (Cardwell 1977: 169).

When the studio was rebuilt in 1923, a second living unit, detailed in the same style as the first, was added at the eastern edge of the property and connected to the original building by an engaging bridged passage. In rebuilding, Maybeck also solved an environmental problem common to the Berkeley hillside sites. Both the view and the strong afternoon sun are to the west, and, if a designer provides for the view by a large window, the resulting heat and glare can make a house untenantable. Maybeck's solution for the large Kennedy studio window is effective and richly decorative. A pair of dark blue canvas hangings set in the recesses on the outside of the building can be closed from the inside to stave off the heat of the sun, and when they cover the window their rich color contrasts with the warm tones of the exterior (Cardwell 1977: 170).

...when rebuilding in Berkeley, his replacement of trelliage with tiles on the Alma S. Kennedy studio (1923) and his design of stucco walls and tile roofs for the McMurray house were more than his adoption of a current Mediterranean mode--they were designs to reduce the hazards of fire (Cardwell 1977: 209).

One of Maybeck's variations on the theme of the living room was a recital hall (plate 153) for Alma Schmidt Kennedy, a piano teacher in Berkeley who was so admired by the Joseph R. Nixons, parents of one of her students, that they commissioned Maybeck to design a combination recital studio and living space for her. The studio was built in 1914 on hillside property owned by the Nixons, whose brown-shingle house stood next door. Both the studio and the Nixons' house burned in the 1923 fire, after which Maybeck rebuilt the studio as it had been, except that the shingled roof, opened up at the eaves in a wooden trellis, was replaced with fire-resistant tile (plate 154). He designed a new house for the Nixons and attached it by a bridge to the studio. The relatively plain little house is sited on the street edge of the property to allow room for a garden on the other side.

The exterior of the Kennedy studio is an idiosyncratic mixture: Tudor arched windows, a band of half-timbering under the roof, and tracery reminiscent of the Roos house, with Mediterranean massing and colors. The split eaves of the low-pitched gable roof let light into the recital hall on the west and into the upper floor living quarters on the south. When the eaves were trellised, the light would have dappled the walls, adding variation to their tone. Maybeck achieved a similarly atmospheric effect in the Joralemon house, built just before the 1923 fire, by spattering walls with different colors, using the Impressionists' pointillist technique.

The dual entrance to the Kennedy studio--one entrance for the living quarters and one for the recital hall (plate 156)--shows that the sloping site could be used to advantage. Maybeck created a ceremonial spatial sequence that circles upward around the corner of the site and into the vestibule several steps below the level of the recital hall. The living spaces are clearly subordinate to the more important recital hall (plates 158-60). Although this two-story room has a different purpose from the living rooms in the houses previously discussed, its form remains much the same. The major difference is that there is no monumental fireplace to distract attention from the main east-west axis. Instead, the wall opposite the entrance to the room is lined with storage and high windows with diamond panes. As in the Rooses' living room, the Kennedy hall has a redwood lining that glows as the light of the afternoon sun floods into the space. Afternoon was probably a favorite time for recitals, but the evening, when light spilled gently over the edge of the metal trough along the ceiling ridge and from other invisible sources, would have been as warmly welcoming. Overflow crowds were accommodated with seating in the balcony on the south side of the hall and on the lower reception level.

A photograph of the Kennedy studio as it was before the fire was used to illustrate "The Maybeck One-Room House," an article by Mira Abbot Maclay in the July 1923 issue of Early Sunset magazine. Her discussion goes beyond the Kennedy studio to present a generic Maybeck family house as an antidote to the complexity of modern life. Maclay wrote that the plan "is a scheme to incorporate the house and garden into one home entity, concentrating the expense of the house ... upon one large, beautiful living-room, supplemented by several utility rooms, so small and insignificant as far as space goes that they do not justify the name of room. They are merely alcoves or additions. Dressing-rooms, bath and kitchen come under this head." (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 158-62, 232).

...when rebuilding in Berkeley, his replacement of trelliage with tiles on the Alma S. Kennedy studio (1923) and his design of stucco walls and tile roofs for the McMurray house were more than his adoption of a current Mediterranean mode--they were designs to reduce the hazards of fire (Cardwell 1977: 209).

A low-pitched gable roof echoes the slope of the land and covers both the one-story and two-story portions of the house (Cardwell 1977: 210).

Professor Orin Kip McMurray was one of the first who came to Maybeck to ask him to rebuild. He was not a former client, but had purchased the F.B. Dresslar chalet which Maybeck had designed in 1902. (Note 1: There are scant records revealing its character. Poor photographs show it to be similar to the Flagg chalet.) Through the years his family had so enjoyed it that when the house burned they wanted it reconstructed. The drawings of the original chalet had also been burned many years earlier in the San Francisco fire. This fact, however, was not what led Maybeck to persuade the McMurrays that they should have a house tailored to their current needs and to the present time. The cost of reproducing a redwood house would not have been economically reasonable and, furthermore, Maybeck could not believe that a design executed for one individual would serve as well for another.

The Dresslar chalet had been built on a piece of sharply sloping property rising more than twenty-five feet in elevation in its diagonal dimension. Located near the street, it had occupied the flattest area of the land. Maybeck's new design, retaining the basement area of the burned house as a sunken garden in front of the new one, freed his planning from the limits of existing foundations and made their costly removal unnecessary. Also, by using the higher portions of the property for building, Maybeck could arrange for better views of San Francisco.

The McMurray house (1924) is one of Maybeck's best. It is the climax of his Mediterranean design which has roots in his classic Maurer studio. A one-storied living area and a two-storied bedroom wing combined, not as linked pavilions as in the early Gothic houses, but as one unit, strongly composed under a sweeping, low-pitched gabled roof. The roof extends over the broken perimeter of the plan, echoes the rising slope of the land, and shelters an entrance which lies intriguingly concealed yet enticingly indicated beyond the sunken garden. The roof is tiled and the walls of a stucco dash coat are rendered in tones of tan and Indian red. Eave rafters, stained blue-green, support ochre colored soffits. Stenciled patterns ornament a tie-beam at the entrance, and a wrought iron railing guards the balcony overlooking the garden. Tile, stucco, and wrought iron were common materials in residential designs of California in the twenties, but few architects who used them attained the rich and bold effects achieved by Maybeck.

The McMurray house plan featured a kitchen overlooking the garden and also containing serving access to the living room balcony and dining space (Cardwell 1977: 211).

In planning the McMurray house, Maybeck introduced features that reflected the changing living patterns of middleclass Americans after World War I. He thought that the housewife, no longer aided by servants, should have a pleasant work space. Consequently, he placed the kitchen at the front of the house to command a view of the garden and neighborhood activities. The kitchen also served a balcony off the living room. A large sliding panel opened to join the kitchen counter to the dining space, permitting Mrs. McMurray to both prepare food and entertain her guests directly and informally. Maybeck placed the cooking elements from an electric range into the tiled counter top--an early prototype for modern drop-in stove units--and installed its oven in the opposite wall. While his inventive design was convenient for the housewife, it was unprofitable for the office, as Mark White later pointed out. In order to obtain the individual cooking units, Maybeck had to purchase a complete stove and have the office staff disassemble it. But when it was charged to the client it was billed as a new stove without adding any of the costs incurred by taking it apart. (Note 2: Conversations between Mark White and the author.)

A split-level plan accommodates the house to the hillside. The entry leads to bedrooms and an open stairwell which connects to the living pavilion at a half-level above. The combination living-dining room is spanned by two bents built of carved and bolted timbers supporting a ridge beam loaded by paired rafters. The framing is organized on a rectangular grid. As in the Mathewson house, Maybeck concentrated his efforts to create one handsome living space. The principal room is finished in fine, vertically-grained redwood. Unfortunately, the view of the Bay to the west is now blocked by multi-storied apartment houses, but the balcony and its view of the garden at the south is accessible through industrial steel sash sliding doors. A large concrete fireplace--its andirons and tools also designed by Maybeck--is obliquely opposed to the balcony, making a strong diagonal line to contrast with the rectangular patterning of the ceiling framing. The room is a bold, dynamic space, but one with intimate areas and humanly-scaled parts (Cardwell 1977: 212).

Since the war, the rise in construction costs had made the simple, well-designed house more difficult to obtain. In 1923 Sunset Magazine published an article entitled "The Maybeck One-Room House," in which he proposed the incorporation of house and garden into one entity, concentrating time and effort as well as cost on one handsomely proportioned and beautifully furnished space. (Note 3:M.A. Maclay, "The Maybeck One-Room House," Sunset Magazine, 51, (July 1923), pp. 64-66.) Service rooms were to be reduced to such a minimal size that they would become mere alcoves. Maybeck had no fixed ideas concerning materials or style to be used, preferring to put the personal tastes and preferences of the owner foremost in the hopes of achieving an individual expression. The kitchen of his one-room house was to be equipped with the best labor-saving devices to take the place of a hired girl. Both the McMurray and the Geisler designs were servantless houses; but it was the studio built on the site of his own burned house which initiated the pattern of his one-room designs (Cardwell 1977: 214).

Most late houses, like the McMurray and the Staniford, had stucco exteriors modeled in several colors of plaster applied in successive dash coats. This method rendered the wall with light pinks at its top to dark earth browns at its bottom and produced a lively finish. But the hand-controlled application was not economical for use on large structures (Cardwell 1977: 223).

The E. F. Geisler house (1924) on Buena Vista Way was the second one built by Maybeck as the direct result of the fire. It was constructed on, and most likely from, the remains of a house at the same location. The name of the original designer has not been determined, but it seems possible that the burned house might have been one of Maybeck's early unrecorded designs. In contrast with the McMurray house, Maybeck chose to repeat the steeply-pitched, gabled roofs and shingled exteriors of the Gothic houses which he had designed thirty years before. The Geisler house also incorporated new features, such as built-in cooking units and the integration of the kitchen with the dining area. But, in addition, the new plan included within the bulk of the house a garage which also functioned as a service and family entry.

The large living room dominates the house. A gallery serving upstairs bedrooms passes through its upper reaches. Its interior is finished in redwood wire-brushed to emphasize the pattern of its grain. This finish made it possible for Maybeck to use salvage materials scorched in the fire. Indeed, to obtain the sugi finish that he had recommended to Keeler for interior treatments in The Simple Home, the wood surface first had to be charred and then brushed.

The Geisler house utilized the existing foundations from its burned predecessor and consisted of three levels composed under steeply-pitched gable roofs.

Maybeck salvaged material from the earlier house which was destroyed by the [1923] fire and obtained the sugi finish by wire-brushing the charred wood (Cardwell 1977: 213).

Since the war, the rise in construction costs had made the simple, well-designed house more difficult to obtain. In 1923 Sunset Magazine published an article entitled "The Maybeck One-Room House," in which he proposed the incorporation of house and garden into one entity, concentrating time and effort as well as cost on one handsomely proportioned and beautifully furnished space. (Note 3:M.A. Maclay, "The Maybeck One-Room House," Sunset Magazine, 51, (July 1923), pp. 64-66.) Service rooms were to be reduced to such a minimal size that they would become mere alcoves. Maybeck had no fixed ideas concerning materials or style to be used, preferring to put the personal tastes and preferences of the owner foremost in the hopes of achieving an individual expression. The kitchen of his one-room house was to be equipped with the best labor-saving devices to take the place of a hired girl. Both the McMurray and the Geisler designs were servantless houses; but it was the studio built on the site of his own burned house which initiated the pattern of his one-room designs (Cardwell 1977: 214).

Location unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 234).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 245).

Abbreviations