Redwood Has No Anniversary

This 50 Year-Old Home Shows The Agelessness Of Good Design Combined With Good Wood

fhr chorm of rhe redwood is rtill ftdiont rdoy, ond hos donc much lo noke the house o clocsic of enduring beoury. Builf neorly 50 yeors ago, il hos raquired o minimum of upkeep ond demonstrcted ogcin dre long-yqpgg econorny of building well-with quolity noreriols.

Of all the Western houses built since early days, few can still claim to look modern. All too often the result of using so-called modern materials and design is a house that is painfully dated as a relic of another era. And a not too valuable antique at that.

The house shown on this page is almost fifty years old and yet looks modern enough to have been built this year. It was designed and built in 1913 by the late Bernard Maybeck, a master architect whose love of redwood is evident in many of his houses still being lived in around the San Francisco-Berkeley area.

By choosing redwood, Maybeck had both an interior and exterior that has grown more mellow and beautiful as the years passed. The outside of the house features redwood shingles and the structural members of redwood are stained and roughly textured. The elegant interiors rely upon the smoothfinished grain of the redwood panels for their character, and of course the natural auburn-colored beauty of the wood.

The architect, one of the great pioneers of the concept now kno'ivn as "contemporary living," used redwood throughout for doors, casings, ceilings, mouldings and panels. Today, thanks to the dimensional stability of redwood. the doors and windows work and fit as smoothly and as snugly as when the house was built.

Another innovation that makes the house seem modern after so many vears is the wav in which the inside iiving areas are related to the outside, particularly the garden areas. To give this effect Nlaybeck used large, floor to ceiling r,r,indows, framed in redwood, and extra large baseboards n,ith the soft color of the redr,vood making

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Avoiloble: T&G4edges ...2 edges... squore edged

Redwood's soff glow everywher+ doors, poneling, cosings, mouldings ond ceilings. And the possing yeors hove merely mellowed the nalurql beouty of the wood, Thonks to lhe dimensionol stobility of the wood, the woll poneling stitl flrs tighrly ond the gloss doors, hondsomely fromed in redwood, slide shut os eosily as fhe doy they were instolled.

R.edwood Home

(Continueil from Page 40) a visually easy transition from inside to outside.

Two of Maybeck's best known \\rorks are the Christian Science Church in Berkeley, California, and San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, designed for the 1915 Pan Pacifrc Exposition. and nou,' undergoing a rebuiiding in more durable materials than the original.

The whole house is a rvell-fitted clesign ullit that calmly combines esthetic qualities and solid, comlnon sense, rvith good workmanship ancl a building material that is botl-r clurable and will age well.

Many of today's budding architects rvould do well to keep Maybeck's ideas in mind when they are clesigrlirrg the houses of today.

An acre of healthy forest needs 20 years to gror,'r' the lumber for a S-room frame house, according to studies made by the U. S. Forest Service.