Hampton House
395 HAMPTON ROAD · PIEDMONT
Hampton House
HISTORY
For much of the first half of the 20th century, Albert Farr was one of the most prestigious residential architects in the San Francisco Bay Area, designing mostly grand revival-style homes in 13 different communities.
His most famous commission was the 15,000-square-foot Wolf House, a rustic fantasy in Sonoma County for the author Jack London that tragically burned to the ground on a hot August night in 1913, just before completion.
In the small, well-heeled city of Piedmont, Farr designed more than 40 homes, says Gail Lombardi, an architectural historian and chair of the Piedmont Historical Society. “He has been called one of the most artistic architects on the West Coast. He was very well regarded,” she says. “People who wanted a statement house hired Albert Farr.”
A grand Farr-designed 1928 Neoclassical estate at 395 Hampton Road in Piedmont has come on to the market, listed by Michael Dreyfus and Ann Newton Cane of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty.
“It’s among the landmark houses in Piedmont,” Ms. Lombardi says. In particular, she likes the great light in the house, the “tall windows with great outlooks, the size of the rooms, and the tall ceilings. It’s a very, very gracious house,” she says. “It has a great room flow and definitely was designed for entertaining.”
The original owners, William St. Cyr Cavalier and his wife, Camille, did a lot of entertaining at the estate known as Hampton House, Ms. Lombardi says. He was a prominent San Francisco and Oakland financier and civic leader, and his company eventually merged with Dean Witter & Co. After he died in 1945, his wife continued to live in the home until her death in 1966.
The builder was Axel Cederborg, Ms. Lombardi says. “Albert Farr used him a lot. He did quality work and his houses have held up well.”
The three-level, 11,225-square-foot house offers seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms, and one partial bath, with a detached one-bedroom, one-bath guest house. It sits on a 1.01-acre level lot.
ORIGINAL DETAILS
Original architectural details in the stately white home include oak hardwood floors, beamed ceilings, wide hallways and doorways, a stained-glass skylight above the curved center staircase, dentil moldings, and heavy double front doors made of wood with copper and wrought-iron details.
A PRIME OPPORTUNITY
After living on nearby Crocker Avenue for many years, Jenny and Michael Lynn bought the property in 2018.
“It had great history, really amazing detail and wonderful light,” Jenny Lynn remembers. “And I loved the indooroutdoor feeling of the house. It has 17 sets of French doors and windows that open to the outdoors. Every room on the first floor opens up to some sort of outside space, whether it’s a patio or a deck or the gardens, and all of the ceilings are over 12 feet,” she says.
It turns out that her husband had his eye on this home long before they bought it. “He liked that it’s over an acre and it has a yard, which is a rare combination in Piedmont,” Ms. Lynn says. “The house was very old looking,” she remembers. “It hadn’t been touched in 20 years. We very much wanted to create a home that reflects modern family living.”
MODERNIZED CLASSIC
The home retained its original charm and historic architectural detail but has been modernized and updated by the Lynns with today’s amenities and conveniences.
These amenities include a 600-square-foot guest house with a full kitchen, two offices, and two laundry rooms, two two-car garages (attached and detached), multiple patios and terraces, an outdoor gas fire pit, a whole-house generator, and a gated circular driveway.
COMPREHENSIVE REMODEL
The Lynns have redone the house from top to bottom. “It’s basically a total update, except for the roof and the windows,” she says. “We even reinforced the foundation for earthquakes. We put in a new HVAC system, all new light fixtures, replaced the water heaters, and redid all of the floors. We installed a new security system and a whole-house generator and updated the well. You name it, we did it.”
“The big part for me is that it’s a historic house that has been completely overhauled, and by completely, I mean everything—all of the systems, the drainage, all of the hard stuff,” colisting agent Mr. Dreyfus says.
“Today it’s more costly to redo an old house than building new from the ground up because you have to take it all apart and then put it back together better than it was before,” he says. “And they’ve done a really, really excellent job at that.”
“Here you have an opportunity to buy a house of this vintage that has been completely redone and yet it retains all of its classic original elements,” Mr. Dreyfus says. “It’s move-in ready.”
Well beyond the new systems and the behindthe-walls components, the Lynns’ renovation focused particularly on creating a whole new kitchen and a reimagined lower level.
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
To create the new heart of the home, the Lynns took the old kitchen down to the studs and reconfigured and expanded the space. It now features a larger island, marble countertops, a prep kitchen, walk-in pantries and China cabinets, a banquette, a new espresso center and multiple Wolf ovens, Miele dishwashers, and Sub-Zero refrigerators.
“My husband has a photographic memory for tastes, and he loves to cook, especially Asian dishes he learned while living in Thailand and Indonesia,” Ms. Lynn says.
Nearby they created a new laundry room, a groundfloor bedroom now used as an office and a new mudroom with a black-and-white marble floor and a built-in bench with cubbies for shoes and other necessities.
BRIGHT LOWER LEVEL
The bottom floor was transformed from a ballroom and dingy storage to light-filled rooms. Walk down the original circular staircase and immediately see the dark wood floors and French doors that open to a marble-floored home theater. Tucked around the corner is an art room with a built-in nook for art supplies.
Renovation of this floor also included a new 2,000+ bottle wine room, full bathroom, gym with indoor/outdoor access, secondary laundry, a multipurpose room that can be used as an office or storage, and a cheery seventh bedroom.
GOOD MORNINGS AND GOOD NIGHTS
The enormous primary bedroom suite on the upperlevel features dual bathrooms and walk-in closets, a private sunroom, a dressing hall, a marble fireplace, and a balcony that overlooks the rear gardens.
REST EASY
There are four additional bedrooms on the second floor along with a comfortable playroom and lovely sitting room. It is a grand house for entertaining, but it has an intimacy and coziness that makes it just right for family-only nights and weekends.
GRAND ENTERTAINING
Farr’s original vision of a magnificent home built for entertaining is evident on the home’s main level which features a large foyer, a solarium, and a 30-foot-long formal living room with an Italian marble fireplace, exterior French doors, and three sets of French windows that open to the front lawn.
The Lynns turned the former formal library into a large family room, with a fireplace with a stone mantel and three sets of French doors that open to the back yard and patios.
FINE DINING
The formal dining room easily seats 14, and a full mirrored bar opens to the back terrace and offers custom brass fixtures, pull-out drawers for liquor, and a Sub-Zero refrigerator for beer and wine.
“The bar is perfect for entertaining and I like its socialness,” Ms. Lynn says.
ONE - OF - A - KIND LIGHTING
Anyone who has renovated an old house will tell you that one of the hardest—and yet most important—things is getting the light fixtures just right.
You want chandeliers, sconces and lanterns that work with the original style and period of the house, but you don’t want dowdy and you certainly don’t want dim. Vintage homes often have high ceilings and grandly proportioned rooms, so you really can’t be timid about the chandeliers.
“Lighting makes the room,” says Ms. Lynn, who handpicked the 50 or so stylish light fixtures as part of the modernization. “It sets the tone for the room, and it’s often overlooked.”
“The first thing we did after we moved in, in 2018, was to remove 100 old, canned lights,” she says. “We wanted to move toward more layered
lighting, and we wanted a mix of vintage and modern. I wanted lighting that would be unexpected.”
To hang over the marble-clad island and elsewhere in the kitchen, Jenny Lynn chose three lanterns and a pair of chandeliers with brass and glass accents from Coleen & Company.
“I discovered this designer when I was at a designer showcase house in Lake Forest, Illinois,” Ms. Lynn says. “Ironically, she’s from California.” All her lighting is customizable, from the brass accents to the exact color of the paint. “This design fits the kitchen perfectly—from the scale to the detail.” Beyond the kitchen, you’ll find Coleen & Company fixtures in the upstairs family room and the primary suite.
STRIKING MATERIALS
In the ground-floor family room, a pair of hammered brass domes by Arteriors provide lots of light—and lots of interesting detail. “They look like they’re floating in the air, and they’re accented with hand-cut crystal around the edges,” Ms. Lynn says. They look vintage, but she purchased them new for this room. “They are always a favorite. Almost every guest who sees them for the first time comments on them. Maybe it’s the scale—they’re 32 inches across— or maybe it’s the unexpected combination of hammered brass and crystal.”
Louisa’s Light, a custom beauty by the San Francisco artist Maloos Anvarian hangs in one of the children’s bedrooms. “I worked with Maloos to add the ideal number of crystal flowers that chase the light around the edge of the Lucite drum,” Ms. Lynn says. “She decided to name the fixture after our daughter Louisa.” You’ll find complementary lanterns in the adjoining en-suite.
CLARET BY AERIN
This crystal flowered chandelier hangs in the primary bedroom suite’s cozy sunroom. “It pairs beautifully with the original 1920s dentil molding that lines the ceiling,” Ms. Lynn says. “Complementary claret sconces finish the magic created when the lights reflect off the paper-white walls in the evenings.”
MURANO SPUTNIK
Ms. Lynn found this vintage, one-of-a-kind Sputnik fixture in the San Francisco boutique Found by Maja. The 1970s brass piece features pink Murano glass flutes that extend from the brass center. “This is my favorite chandelier in the house,” she says. “This classic Sputnik light definitely makes a statement.”
INDOOR/OUTDOOR LIVING
Another focal point of the home is indoor/outdoor living. Every room on the first floor opens to some sort of outside space, whether it’s a patio or a deck or the gardens. The Lynns focused on improving outdoor spaces to ensure they are inviting as the indoor ones. They added a fire pit to the back patio, resurfaced the tennis court and replanted the adjacent patio, and created a rose garden and “hydrangea hill.” Most importantly, they added security gates and a front hedge for privacy.
The home and surrounding 1+ acre of property is truly an oasis that they love sharing together and with family and friends.
AN EXCLUSIVE LOCATION
This gated estate is private and secure, and yet its coveted Piedmont location is just blocks away from Hampton Park and just a mile to Piedmont’s town center. “It’s an excellent location,” Mr. Dreyfus adds. Piedmont is “very community oriented with great schools. And this is smack dab in the middle of everything.”
Piedmont is “just the most wonderful community,” Ms. Lynn says. “Our kids started walking to school in kindergarten. You really get to know your neighbors, and people are nice! There is so much to like here, and people go to all these events in town. It’s very safe here. It’s 10 minutes to downtown Oakland and without traffic you can be in San Francisco in 20 minutes,” she adds.
Piedmont is located in Alameda County in the hills near Oakland, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. The residential community is known for its high-ranking school district and high property values. Gracious living is a phrase that easily comes to mind when viewing the well-manicured lawns and beautifully appointed homes in the area.
Truly an exceptional location for an extraordinary estate.
