In the face of such magnificence, one might be forgiven for overlooking the Gothic tracery and masterful handling of decorative detailing in the Samuel Goslinsky shingled house, one of the outstanding early hallmarks of the first phase of the Bay Area Tradition concentrated in the 3200 block of Pacific Avenue, or Maybeck's version of English Gothic in his S. Erlanger house in Forest Hills.

Indeed, when the breadth of Maybeck's work is taken into consideration, he seems to be at least four architects in one.

• George Newhall house
• T. J. Bunnell house
• Telegraph Hill Neighborhood house
• Leon L. Roos house
• Samuel Goslinsky house
• R. Fry house
• E. B. Power house
• Edwin C. Young house
• Palace of Fine Arts
• S. Erlanger house

Additional remodeling, July 1906 (Cardwell 1977: 241).

Living room addition, 1902, November; House moved to this location and remodeled in 1904, September (Cardwell 1977: 240,241).

Bernard Maybeck, addits. 1913 & 1928. Reblt. 1940s; John Kelly.

This neighborhood association was founded by Alice Griffith, a pioneer figure in San Francisco social work. Now remodeled into shops, offices, and apartments, the building has an interior court with balcony access to the second floor. Its most recent addition, designed by AGORA, came in the last several years Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 57).

An historic neighborhood center founded by Alice Griffith, a pioneering social worker, the building's alpine chalet style was often used by Maybeck. The many alterations of form and use have preserved the attractive courtyard (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992:50; Cardwell 1977: 241).

Additions by Maybeck, 1913 and 1928 (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 229).

At the foot of Telegraph Hill is the rambling frame structure formerly occupied by the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association. This compound, at 1736 Stockton Street, was begun in 1907, when Bernard Maybeck was commissioned to design a building to house a dispensary, club room, and flats for the nurses and settlement workers of the Association.

The building was enlarged in 1909, 1913, and 1928. It is far from certain that Maybeck had anything to do with the additions, but they were executed in a compatible style, and it is entirely possible that he did draw the plans. Though the Neighborhood Association moved to new quarters in 1954, the building's new owner has preserved its integrity (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 59).

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 & 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).

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 & 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).

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 & 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).

An intriguing play on the half-timber, with some features (the pulpit-like corner balcony with quatrefoils and the half-timber supergraphics) that are architectural puns (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 173).

The first new construction with the full resumption of his practice in 1919 was a clubhouse built for the Forest Hills Association. The commission came through a former client and Bohemian Club friend, E. C. Young. In 1911 Maybeck had made preliminary drawings of a townhouse for Young, similar in detail to the Goslinsky residence, but it was never constructed. In 1913 he made a new design for a magnificient site in the newly opened Forest Hill district of San Francisco. The house commands a superb view of the Golden Gate to the north and the city to the east. It is an open-planned house with all of the charm and intriguing interior spatial effects of Maybeck's best work. However, the exterior treatment in shingles, half timbers, and aberrant Gothic details place it among those designs in which Maybeck seems not to have made all of the final decisions (Cardwell 1977: 181).

In 1913 E. C. Young, a Bohemian Club member who owned a choice hilltop site in Forest Hill with a breathtaking view, asked Maybeck to design a house on it for him. Maybeck made a long rectangular plan that set a two-story living room at the front of the lot and raised it above the street to allow for a garage on one side (plate 138). Steps curve up from the sidewalk to a terrace atop the garage. The terrace extends along the south side of the house to a shallow court formed by one end of the living room to the east and a study wing to the west. Set in one corner of a trellised court, the entrance door is flanked on either side by double glass doors (plate 137). One set of doors opens into the dining room, and when they are open, the terrace becomes an extension of the room.

Making the main entrance door so much a part of the private side of the house seems surprising, but the siting of the house suggests an explanation. Maybeck's plan provides a southern exposure for the important living areas inside and out, and captures the splendid views north to the Golden Gate Bridge and east to the city. Also, interrupting the living room with a street entrance would have destroyed the dramatic effect gained by approaching the room indirectly. The plan provides clearly separated public and private sides and an uninterrupted flow of space from the entrance hall through the important rooms. The entry and the stair hall are also well situated for circulation to the upstairs rooms and to the kitchen at the back of the house. Tucked away in the northeastern corner and barely detectable from the inside or the outside is a simple, narrow door opening onto a small balcony that takes in the sweep of the view to the north. Maybeck directed more attention to the balcony on the outside by giving it a boldly scaled railing with Gothic quatrefoils and a sculptural pedestal (plate 139).

The outside of the Young house seems almost a parody of the English half-timber style; by 1913 that style had become so common that parody probably seemed appropriate to Maybeck. Just as the plan divides the house into a front and a back section, so the exterior has two different claddings: a half-timbered front and a shingled back (like the 1907 Senger house). At first glance, the half-timbering seems perfunctory; it turns the corner in a slapdash way and stops abruptly. Yet the absence of a graceful transition can be read as Maybeck's declaration that such half-timbering was purely and arbitrarily decorative.

The interior of the Young house is more frankly rustic than the outside would suggest. The dining-room ceiling has the exposed floor joists of the upper floor; the high-peaked living-room ceiling is braced with heavy beams and lined with rough-sawn boards laid diagonally (plate 140). The large windows on two sides of the living room provide ample daylight and give the room an openness that is countered on its north side by the tall concrete fireplace, which has its chimney exposed all the way to the ceiling (plate 141). The rudeness of the exposed framing of the ceiling is somewhat countered by the richness of the fireplace mantel. The room makes a strong impression largely because of the elemental forms and expressiveness of the materials. Against its solid strength Maybeck played off the delicacy of one of his most enchanting lighting fixtures, an arrangement of miniature lamps in black iron suspended at different levels--not exactly the Roos house lighting gone rustic but with a similar effect. Just as the eighteen-by-twenty-two-foot living room gives the impression of being larger than it really is because of the drama of its upper area, so the high ceiling of the square master bedroom, ninteen by nineteen feet, makes it appear larger (plate 142). Here the exposed framing on the ceiling is refined into elegant molded-wood members that give the room a grand feeling (Woodbridge and Barnes 1992: 146-50, 232).

South and west of Twin Peaks lie three additional Maybeck structures, all built in the wild area of Forest Hill between 1913 and 1919. Maybeck designed a number of buildings for friends and for organizations of particular interest to him. A case in point is his residence for Edwin C. Young, whom Maybeck knew through the Bohemian Club. Begun late in 1913, the home at 51 Sotelo Avenue was completed in 1914 and is considered the first Maybeck building in the Forest Hill Tract.

Because the house is built into the side of a hill, its dimensions, particularly in depth, are especially impressive. Some Maybeck students feel the exterior of this house represents the beginning of his movement toward fanciful rather than essential forms and patterns, as the ornamentation here seems applied rather than integral to the structure. If this is true (and the projecting beams which form a lattice across the front seem to suggest it) his style had certainly lost none of its strength. Nor are his hallmarks missing: the balconies, a necessity in Europe where he studied, are perhaps more notable here than in any of the other residences discussed--they not only ring the living room on the second-story level just under the cathedral ceiling, but are also used outside (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 130-31).

In 1915 Louis C. Mullgardt, who designed the other showpiece of the PPIE, the Tower of Jewels, described the Palace's design as "a free interpretation of Roman forms and purely romantic conception, entirely free from obedience to scholastic precedent. Its greatest charm has been established through successful composition; the architectural elements have been arranged into a colossal theme...into which the interwoven planting and the mirror lake have been incorporated in a masterful way." Until 1962 the crumbling stucco original of this beloved relic of the Exposition survived in the melancholy state Maybeck said was the right mood for the fine arts. Then, thanks largely to the generosity and persistence of Walter Johnson, who matched the funds raised by the city, it was restored in concrete. The exhibition building behind the rotunda was given a new life as a home for the Exploratorium, an auditorium, and other cultural activities (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 94).

In 1912 when the plans for the Panama Pacific International Exposition were being discussed, Maybeck was not invited to participate. He was automatically excluded because he had executed no large buildings. When he recalled the incident in 1950 he said, "I hadn't even done a warehouse. However, Mrs. Maybeck ripped the boys up and down the back with letters." Her message was: give Ben a job.

The head of the architectural committee was Willis Polk, one of Maybeck's former students who in 1918 designed the famous glass curtain Hallidie Building in San Francisco. He hired Maybeck as a draftsman on an hourly basis to coordinate work in the Joy Zone. The Palace of Fine Arts had been assigned to Polk but since he was busy, he asked the draftsmen in the Exposition office to put their minds to work on a scheme.

Maybeck knew the grounds well from frequent inspections in the Joy Zone. He remembered a depression in the land in which water had collected and went to investigate. He thought of dredging out a lagoon at this spot, and making it a part of the architectural scheme of the Palace of Fine Arts. His idea was a structure that would be as beautiful reflected in the water as it was against the sky.

With his usual loose and atmospheric approach to preliminary design, he sketched a gallery, an elliptical colonnade and rotunda in charcoal. At the back of his mind was the memory of Piranesi engravings; it was this melancholy note in architecture and gardening that he strove to attain. In an introduction to Maybeck's booklet, The Palace of Fine Arts and Lagoon, Panama Pacific Exposition, 1915, Frank Morton Todd wrote that Maybeck's theme was a building of vanquished grandeur, in which "willows and acacias choked its portals, grasses dug into its urns and ivy overran its cornices and dimmed its lines."

The sketch was passed along by Polk to other members of the Architectural Commission; the person most impressed by the sketch was Henry Bacon of New York, designer of the Lincoln Memorial. "You will hear of this some day," he promised Maybeck.

Because of Bacon's interest in the design, Maybeck's scheme for the Palace of Fine Arts was adopted. Willis Polk, unwilling to be the author of something that was not his, stepped aside and generously gave Maybeck full charge of the work. However, Maybeck continued to be paid his draftsman's wage. "I didn't get rich on that job," he said.

All the buildings at the Exposition were designed in the neo-classical style made famous by the Columbian Exposition. In his booklet Maybeck wrote that he had arrived at his forms and details as one "matches the color of a ribbon with a sample in his hand...You do the same with architecture. You examine an historic form and you see whether the effect it produces in your mind matches the feeling you are trying to portray."

The orange octagonal rotunda was set at the center of the composition; on either side were two detached peristyles made of an imitation travertine marble, which had been developed for repair work on the Pennsylvania Station in New York. The peristyle repeated the curve of the art gallery and followed the shore line of the lagoon. The rotunda dominated the entire landscape.

The guidebook The architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition, stated "Of all the wonderful effects of the Exposition grounds none is so full of haunting beauty as the vistas afforded by the Palace of Fine Arts...By the indirect system of illumination, an effect as of strong moonlight is produced and from concealed sources under cornices and behind columns, a soft reflected radiance pervades peristyle and rotunda."

In an introduction to the exposition guide, Louis Christian Mullgardt, another pioneer of western modern architecture, and a member of the Architectural Commission, also commented on the Palace of Fine Arts, "The entire composition bespeaks the mind of a romanticist whose productions are swayed more by nature's glories than by scholastic tradition."(McCoy 1975: 37-40).

At the end of the first World War, Willis Polk--in accepting a post with the city's Memorial and Monument Committee--suggested that the Palace of Fine Arts be rebuilt of permanent materials as a war memorial. Polk said that the buildings "seem to me always holding out mythical hands in a pitiful appeal for restoration, perpetuation." Nothing came of Polk's proposal.

As the years passed and time and weather continued their destructive work, the colonnade and rotunda grew dearer to the hearts of San Franciscans. But in 1958 a bond issue to rebuild was voted down, and it seemed destined for destruction. However, in 1959 Walter Johnson, a San Francisco resident, gave $2 million to save the structures; with $2 million more added by the state of California, the Palace of Fine Arts will be rebuilt from original plans on file in the University of California architectural library (McCoy 1975: 43).

By the beginning of 1912 the architects for the full commission [of the Panama Pacific International Exhibit] had been named: Thomas Hastings, Henry Bacon, and the firm of McKim, Mead and White, all of New York; George W. Kelham, Louis C. Mullgardt, Arthur Brown, Jr., of San Francisco; and Robert D. Farquhar of Los Angeles. Now the Architectural Commission had as its members not only Willis Polk and Thomas Hastings, who were friends of Maybeck, but also Edward Bennett and Arthur Brown, Jr., his former students. Maybeck's records do not indicate exactly when he gained employment on Polk's staff, but he was instrumental in keeping part of the site--water covered one-third of it--from being filled, thus forming the lagoon which became a significant part of the Fair's plan. While Edward Bennett is credited with the creative concept that called for courts rather than buildings to be designed by the architects, it seems likely that Maybeck had some influence on his former student in this decision. His own fascination with negative spaces would support such a speculation. In any case it was a scheme that he later was able to exploit and dramatize.

Polk, as Chairman of the Commission, had been given the most important and expensive building to be constructed on the site. Unlike the other structures which were to be built of wood, the Palace of Fine Arts was to be constructed in steel to provide fire protection for its valuable contents. For the second meeting of the Architectural Commission in August of 1912, each architect had been asked to present preliminary sketches. Polk had decided to have an office competition to select the design for the Fine Arts building. When all drawings were done, a unanimous decision of his office staff led to the selection of Maybeck's charcoal sketch as the preliminary design to be presented to the Commission. Henry Bacon, in particular, was enormously impressed by the sketch. (Note 6: B. R. Maybeck, KPFA Tape 1953, C.E.D Docs.) When he and others began congratulating Polk on his brilliant composition, Polk revealed the author of the design and, in a magnanimous gesture, proposed Maybeck in place of himself as architect for the structure. In one stroke Maybeck's status was changed from that of a minor draftsman working on Fair buildings to the architect of the principal structure (Cardwell 1977: 141).

Walter Steilberg, Julia Morgan's engineer, told the following story about the commission for the Palace of Fine arts:

I've never forgotton, though, Willis Polk's fine gesture at the time of the Palace of Fine Arts. Here was this self-centered little S.O.B., as many people called him, with the job himself of designing the Palace of Fine Arts. He showed his friend Maybeck--Mr. Maybeck was always trying to reform Mr. Polk in an entirely friendly way--these sketches (Chesley Bonestell told me this story; he was there at the time.) Maybeck says, "No, I don't think that's a good solution, Willis. Let me have the facts in the case--the whole plan, not before you fill in this mud hole, as you call it, but the entire plan, and the number of galleries, and so on. Let me see what I can do with it; I'd much rather make a positive criticism than a negative one."

So Maybeck worked on it over the weekend and he came in on Monday, and, Bonestell said, he just rolled his drawings out and said to Polk, "Now, listen, this thing that you call a mudhole, that's your opportunity: you can make a reflecting mirror of that. And it'll serve another purpose: when the crowds come down this great esplanade from among the other buildings, they won't rush right into the presence of art; they'll slow down a little bit and go around that. Make a reflecting pool of it, and then put the colonnades in here so they come around into the presence of art slowly.

And then you'll put this big dome in this place; that's not housing anything in particular, so it might be well to just make something very small so that people will see how enormous the architecture is, and they'll be slowed up a little bit. They'll go into the galleries tamed down a bit. Then when they're in there they won't go 'squads right' and 'squads left;' they'll go around and see sculpture in different lights. It'll make a pleasanter building, I think." Polk said to Mr. Maybeck, "Maybeck, the job's yours. Go ahead and do it." (Regional Oral History Office 1976: Vol. 1, pp.144-45).

Now the Palace has been reconstructed in pre-cast concrete, with special attention to tone and texture, in an attempt to duplicate Maybeck's masterpiece. While no ultimate use for the complex has yet been determined, it is hoped that it will eventually house one or more of the city's cultural organizations (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 14-15).

The clients wanted a medieval English manor house, but the product resists classification. The design reveals Maybeck's compositional skills and his ability to manipulate eclectic elements with originality (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 173).

As a result of Maybeck's buildings at the Fair and the recognition that followed, 1916 saw the start of construction of a series of houses whose scale and budgets Maybeck had not known since his work on the Roos house in San Francisco. Clients impressed by the populatity of the Palace of Fine Arts turned to Maybeck as an artist worthy of patronage. One of the first commissions of 1916 was for the S. H. Erlanger house in Forest Hills, San Francisco. The owners had selected as a prototype an English medieval manor, Samlesbury Hall, in Lancashire, but Maybeck's creative interpretation of English Gothic dissolved into details and proportions peculiar to him. In his design, Maybeck piles room on room in casual abandon to form three stories burgeoning with polygonal bays, protruding dormers, and open decks. It is a large, shingled house with steep, gabled roofs. While its overall form discourages classification, its articulated living room pavilion, tall, trussed and raftered, echoes Maybeck's Gothic designs (Cardwell 1977: 174).

Maybeck obviously found the living hall indispensable to creating a congenial setting, for he used it over and over again in houses large and small, changing the materials and colors as he saw fit--as, for example, in the Roos, Erlanger, and Young houses.

Regarding the 1916 Erlanger house (plate 143), also built in Forest Hill, Maybeck wrote a cryptic but revealing description:

The house is our attempt to suggest the idea of an English character in California. Although this house would never happen in England, it yet has an English feeling. The lower wing is a chapel form living room greatly used in an early period, the ceiling of this room is very similar to one in Sainesbury Hill Lancashire. The second story windows are of iron like their English prototypes. The building and its setting among the trees loudly proclaims the good taste of Mrs. and Mr. Erlanger from whom the suggestions came.⁴

The interior is less formal than the exterior would imply. Repeated rhythms of sharply-pointed gables reiterate Maybeck's and other architects' allegiance to early American seventeenth century homes. Much of the strength and purity of Old Salem is here, but to the ageless traditions of massive framing, wooden board or shingle sheathing and small-paned leaded windows, Maybeck has added a freedom, a thrust of interior to exterior, that is inescapably his own (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 131).