• 2786 Buena Vista house
• Wells cabin
• Wallen Maybeck house (#2)
• Bernard R. Maybeck studio
• Mark Morris house
• Charles Aikin house
• Abbreviations

nm (Cardwell 1977: 246; Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 236).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 246).

Location and condition unknown (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 236).

The Wallen Maybeck house (1937), located on the ridge of the Berkeley Hills, commands magnificent views. Built in two separate blocks, it shelters an eastern court overlooking Wildcat canyon. The plan is derived from early California prototypes where rooms are joined into one volume with exterior circulation. Maybeck's bold design in concrete and corrugated iron roofing incorporates a sandwich of precast concrete panels separated by insulation made of waste rice hulls. The interior panels are finished with an exposed aggregate and the exterior ones left with a natural concrete surface.

The Wallen Maybeck house boldly employed concrete and corrugated iron roofing to create a fire-proof structure of unique character (Cardwell 1977: 232-33).

Wallen and Jacomena spent 1936 in Marin County; they returned to Berkeley the next year to find that Ben and Annie had moved into their house in thier absence because Kerna had married and the uphill house was too small for both couples. Loath to move again, Ben offered to plan another house for Wallen and Jacomena on ten acres of open land that he and Annie owned in Kensington, about three miles north of their Buena Vista Way property.

Having bought the land at a bargain price in 1908, the Maybecks had held on to it with the idea that they would eventually sell lots to young families--Annie preferred teetotalers who did not smoke--who wanted to build their own houses. Maybeck often made complimentary house drawings for prospective buyers. Though idealistic, this approach to developing the property had not proved to be particularly practical. The remote hilltop was exceptionally windy and foggy,m and it took courage and imagination to see it as a homesite, even given the grand views east and west. As the first settlers, Wallen and Jacomena became guinea pigs for Maybeck's innovative ideas about appropriate construction methods for the site.

Since no fire department served the area, which became a tinderbox of dry grassland during the long summer, fire-resistant concrete walls (plate 202) and metal roofs were part of the program. Because the family with its young twin daughters had to be sheltered in short order, the plan called for two building phases. The first phase resulted in a long rectangular structure, facing east and west, that had two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. A grarage, perpendicular to the other structure and used for eating and sleeping, was also part of the first phase. Thus two wings of a future courtyard were made. As for the style of the house, Jacomena has recalled that Ben had them study books on English manor houses.³ Riding the crest of the hill (plate 205), the building does evoke the image of a manor house on, say, a Scottish moor. Later residents of the area called the house "Wuthering Heights."

The family moved into the house--which they called Hilltop--on New Year's Day, 1938. Ben was seventy-six that year, but he had regularly walked the three miles from the house on Buena Vista Way to supervise the construction, and he continued this trek in the months to come. All aspects of the construction process interested him, and virtually every detail reveals his inventive way with cheap materials. The front door (plate 204) is made of six one-inch-by-six-inch redwood planks laminated to a sheet of plywood and banded by steel straps with unfinished edges cut from flat sheets. The ends of the bands are shaped like bow ties, and simple strap hinges welded to the bands support this heavy door. Folding doors, which have a hinged door in the middle, separate the living from the dining area. The concrete fireplace (plate 206) was cast with a sloping shelf at the back of the opening to trap the smoke. The walk-in hearth is set in an inglenook.

The major experiment involved casting the concrete walls (plate 207), which was done on site, with members of the family assisting.⁴ A friend of Ben's named A. E. Troeil had developed a modular system for concrete construction that he called the Steel Speed-form Method. This method used two-foot-tall flanged steel panels of various widths, which could be clamped together with steel hooks that fitted into holes in the steel ties. These holes occurred at regular intervals so that the panels could be spaced in graduated widths and layers of concrete could be poured in successive operations. The walls of the west wing had two outer layers, each four inches thick, and an inner layer of Bubblestone six inches thick, which provided much-needed insulation. The steel panels were set at the desired width, and the concrete was poured inside; after it had cured, the forms were pulled away and set for the next pour. Troeil had also developed special forms for 90-degree projections and turns, along with steel forms for doors and windows that could be set between the steel panels. When the doorway forms were removed, a steel doorstop was embedded in the concrete, and a curved molding remained impressed around the doorjamb and doorhead. When Troeil's module was not suitable, Maybeck built wooden forms.

The sequence of constructing the walls with the modular forms had to be carefully planned. The concrete footings were poured first, with reinforcing bars set into them. Then the forms were set in place to a height of nine feet, and six-inch-by-six-inch wire mesh reinforcement was put in place around the steel window forms. Conduit and switch boxes for electrical service also had to be routed within the walls. The concrete was made in batches poured a foot high at a time. The final exterior layer required that steel-and-wood forms be set up in special ways to create a triangular cap that bonded together the three layers (two of concrete, one of Bubblestone) of the wall. Steel framing designed for barns and industrial buildings was used to support the corrugated-metal sheeting of the roof. The sheeting was bolted to steel purlins (rubber washers on the exterior provided a waterproof shield), which were, in turn, bolted to the steel rafters. The ceilings were hung from steel straps bolted to the rafters and insulated with redwood bark; the doors were hung, and the steel window frames installed (plate 208). No sooner had the family moved in than they began planning the next phase.

Meanwhile, the garage had been built using another of Mr. Troeil's methods. This one consisted of a diagonal lattice of two-by-fours cut to form two eight-by-four-foot panels spaced five inches apart. Hollow metal forms were pushed through the holes in the lattice, wire reinforcing was inserted, and concrete was poured in from the top. By the force of gravity and much tamping, the concrete found its way to the bottom of the form and gradually filled it up around the metal cross-forms. The result was an open grille that could be filled with glass block. The garage walls were left open, but the south-facing kitchen wall, which was made by this method, was filled in with glass block (plates 209, 210).

A third method was used to cast the walls of the living or studio wing (plate 211), which was phase two. the ten-inch-thick wall was cast in one operation, with the steel panels used on the exterior and the precast two-foot-by-four-foot Bubblestone panels held in place by two-by-six-foot wooden posts. Wooden forms also supported the steel molds for the overhangs. As in the west wing, reinforcing and electrical conduit were installed before the concrete was poured into the cavity between the Bubblestone panels and the steel panels. A shelf was cast at the top of the wall on the inside, and the ends of the four-by-ten-inch wooden ceiling beams were supported by wooden blocks set on the shelf. The block ends were finished with a decorative cut; metal straps were bolted to bind the blocks and the beams. Ordinarily the blocks would have been extended as chords or ties to complete the triangular truss supporting the roof. Here, however, the heavy wooden chords were replaced by three-quarter-inch steel tie-rods with vertical members, painted red, connected to the ridge (plate 212). The use of metal rods minimizes the interruption to the space while providing a subtle, rhythmic reminder of the modular framing system. The wooden floor of the sleeping loft above the dining room was suspended from the beams by steel ties. Below the floor, the particle-board ceiling of the dining/inglenook area was insulated with redwood bark. The folding doors described above could be pulled across the end of the room to keep the fire's heat from escaping into the main space.

Despite the thick walls and the measures taken to insulate the interior, the cold, clammy wind pushed its way in through the high glass bay at the studio's west end and through other openings. Maybeck devised a heating system for the winter room, the dining room, that Rube Goldberg would have saluted. He routed hot water from the furnace (located in a small room next to the kitchen) through a radiator from a Model A Ford. The hot water circulated first through this radiator, which was encased under the stairway to the loft, and then out to other radiators in the house. A blower forced air through the Model A radiator into the plenum between the concerte floor slab and the oak floor in the dining room, crreating a kind of radiant heat.

Another fireplace, a small one, is in the main bedroom of the west wing (plate 213); it has a redwood flue cover to keep out drafts when no fire is needed. The chimneys themselves end in Maybeck's signature caps--a lantern-like form skirted with concrete tiles angled to create a venturi effect to draw the smoke out at a rapid rate. The flat cover also helped keep the rain from pouring in, at least when there was a good fire going.

When the studio wing was completed, it was connected to the original west wing by a wooden hallway with the main entrance door (plate 214). A third wing, which was to enclose the courtyard, was never built. Wallen Maybeck went off to serve in the army in World War II, leaving his wife and daughters to brave the elements alone. An antiaircraft bunker was set up on the ridge to the north, within sight of the house, and the men in charge of it got their water and electricity from the same source as the house. The wind howled, the fog rolled in, and Jacomena moved back to La Loma Park. Hilltop was rented and eventually sold.

We don't know how Maybeck evaluated Hilltop. His repeated visits to the house after it was rented suggest that it was a pet project, one in which he was able to indulge his passion for experimenting with structure and materials. Since it was built after he retired from practice, we can only speculate if he would ever have repeated the experiment with a client who was not a family member. Though Hilltop is not a mansion, it is a great house and one that never fails to astound its viewers. Perhaps it can be thought of as a peak moment in a long career that had more personal than public moments of triumph (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 190, 199-210, 236).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 246).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 246).

nm (Cardwell 1977: 246).

Maybeck's last house, built in 1940, was more a neighborly act than a commission. Charles Aikin, a professor of political science, and his wife, Audrey, an artist, bought property from the Maybecks on Buena Vista Way. (According to family accounts, Mrs. Aikin pestered Maybeck to help her design their house, but declined to pay him any commission after it was built.) Now nearly eighty, Maybeck seems to have retained his delight in creating, and Audrey Aikin recorded his statements about the work in her diary. Of the living room (plate 216) he said: "It is a grand and quiet room. What I want you to do is this: look around for a poet or a musician. Invite him in and let him just sit in hre. Some spaces are disquieting, but this is all right. Give him something to drink--ah, but nothing with whiskey in it--or he'll stay all night.!"⁵

This last of Maybeck's living halls is a rerun of those we have seen before, but with new variations in materials. The ceiling has pecky cypress, the "poor man's carving," between the beams; the main feature of the room is a culptural concrete fireplace (plate 219) that is baronial in scale--Maybeck said that he wanted Charles Aikin to be able to impress his students. As usual, the hall is approached indirectly from both the uphill and the downhill entrance. The two entrances occur almost opposite each other, on line with the stone steps that ascend the hill. Thus the house is also a "hillside house" very similar to the one in the undated drawing (see plate 127) that Maybeck had made years earlier. The stucco-and-wood exterior of the Aikins' house is modest in charactaer, like the 1933 family houses and a few other houses on Buena Vista Way whose owners Maybeck advised. According to Jacomena Maybeck, he persisted in this habit of giving advice as long as he was able, and whenever construction was going on in the neighborhood he could be found sitting in a chair near the workmen, chatting with them and offering suggestions.⁶ (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 210-14, 236).

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