The Houses of William Wurster: Frames for Living

T h e H o u s e s o f W i l l i a m W u rs t e r

Introduction

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A P r o f e s s i o n a l Li f e 19 17 –19 7 3

Caitlin Lempres Brostrom and Richard C. Peters

Princeton Architectural Press ¡ New York

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CONTENTS

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11 Preface

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Introduction: A Professional Life

1917–1973

The Houses of William Wurster 19 2 5 –19 31 : Th e Ea r ly Y e a r s

Gillespie House Smith House

40 W. Gregory Farmhouse

46 Kellam House

50 Hagar House

56 Hollins House

64 General Manager’s House (Kaplansky-Howes)

70 Sloss House

82 Mackenzie House

84 Berry/Lombardi House

86 Church House

90 Voss House

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19 3 3 –19 3 8 : M i d d l e P ha s e

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98

100

106

114

122

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134

136

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19 3 9 –19 6 3 : Th e Lat e ER A

Foreword by Donlyn Lyndon

Benner House Butler House Kenyon Cottage Apartments Miller House Dondo House Jensen House Hamill House Mendenhall House Clark House Green Camp

Gerbode House Grover House

158 Chickering House

160 S. Pope House

166 Wolski House

176 Walters House

184 Heller House

186 Coleman House

190 G. Pope House 198 W. Henderson House

204 Baer House

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152

209 Acknowledgments

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Primary Professional

Collaborators

215 Notes

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Selected Bibliography

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Records of Publication

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Illustration Credits

223 Index

William Wurster in the 1960s as dean at the College of Environmental Design at the Universit y of California, Berkeley

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T HE EARLY Y EARS 19 2 5 –19 31

19 2 5 19 31

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T h e E a r ly Y E a rs Starting out, William Wurster’s new architecture developed a regional response and garnered national fame, reflecting the country’s expansive spirit before it entered the Great Depression.

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19 2 5

Gillespie House Oakland, California

This house was designed and built between 1925 and 1926. Wurster met Chester Gillespie, who was the Chief of the State Sanitation Board, while working on the San Leandro Filtration Plant.

Gillespie wanted Wurster to create a small retreat in a pine forest in the Oakland Hills.

Unlike his earlier projects, this was the first that was not derived from European precedent.

Before this, Wurster designed what his clients wanted, houses that reflected popular style as depicted in contemporary periodicals—that of revivalist architecture. Wurster’s desire and ability to make homes that allowed for enjoyable living indoors and out was already in evidence in his earlier works (Elwood Wright House, Oakland, 1925), but this is the earliest example of the implementation of these ideas in a regional building language. The architecture became known as the “carpenter tradition”—using local materials and construction practices as the basis for architectural choices.

Wurster created an integrated response by designing and developing the house and gardens simultaneously (he said it took him only hours to design the house). The site plan shows the complete utilization of the grounds and gardens, and assimilates—even at this small scale—the lessons of designing landscape and building en masse, learned while Wurster worked for Delano and Aldrich, relating all spaces, inside and out, to each other and to a specific use or outlook.

Whimsical on the exterior with woodpecker brackets and green shutters, the interiors were more formal and reminiscent of the work of his mentors, John Galen Howard and Ernest Coxhead.

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Wurster’s personal snapshots

top left and right: Wurster’s personal snapshots bottom: Site and floor plan

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19 2 7 a n d 19 31

Smith House Berkeley, California

Concurrent with the Gillespie House, this French Regency townhouse was designed for two elderly sisters and built in 1927; it was completed with the addition of a design studio in a front wing in 1931. In the original design, on Wurster’s insistence, the entry, living room, and dining room were painted a light green: “The entrance must have an appeal that draws a warmth to the person coming in.” 1 The 1931 addition at the front of the property enclosed a small formal garden court and also provided an arched passageway that allowed entrance to the original entry at the living room wing. The courtyard plan allowed the living room to open to two private gardens and made this small house seem expansive despite its confined site.

Landscaping by the owner and William Wurster with “later advice by Lockwood deForest.” 2

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Wurster's early Smith plan

top: An early photograph shows the addition of the design studio apartment and garage in front of the original living quarters. bottom: Wurster's Smith plan, with addition

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19 2 7

W. Gregory Farmhouse Scott’s Valley, California

Warren Gregory originally commissioned his good friend John Galen Howard, and his son Henry, to design a family farmhouse for summer retreats.

The Gregorys had already been vacationing in another house on the property, which had been designed some years before by Howard on a site in a shady ravine. The family often picnicked on the site for the new house and had come to love the exposure and distant views to the Pacific Ocean. On the new site there was an existing water tower and rammed earth structure intended to function as a garage.3 The Howard scheme for the new house from 1926—a cruciform plan to be built in rammed earth with ornate Italianate features—was abandoned by Sarah Gregory after her husband’s unexpected death in 1927. Later that year, she asked Wurster to redesign the project. Legend has it that she had previously toured Wurster’s completed projects and felt that the carpenter-tradition of the Gillespie house in the Oakland Hills embodied the aesthetics that she found most fitting as the basis for the design of the farmhouse summer retreat.

In October 1927, Wurster made a sketch on his first visit to the site with Sarah Gregory and her good friend, Elizabeth Ellis, and the house was built almost without alteration to the original design. The working drawings were finished six days after the initial sketch. The construction began in December, and the house was completed the following spring. It was a designed for a temperate setting that gracefully blurred the distinction between indoor and outdoor living. The farmhouse as a collection of linked forms copied no traditional forms; rather, it embodied the

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region’s essential spirit as conceived by a creative genius. Wurster took vernacular references and made architecture. Wurster later wrote that the following fundamentals governed the project (somewhat paraphrased): First, appropriateness of the building to the site, the house was to be long and low and built around an early California “yard,” and was paved with the endgrain stumps of redwoods cut in the area. Second, simple living; there is no dining room, meals are eaten on a porch. For privacy and to avoid halls, rooms are entered from the exterior. Third, modest cost; fundamental principles that need to be maintained were a good roof, foundation, and draft-free walls.

Otherwise, no plaster, just whitewashed board walls. Fourth, no garden upkeep; entrance yard is an arid space, with terraces for living and games.

The goal was to leave the place closed up for long intervals without worry.4 Elements that were critical for the success of this project were the forecourt facade, relatively closed to the west, while circulation between rooms occurred along an outside covered passageway along this edge. The yard, with its redwood stump paving and covered walkway, provided shelter from the midday sun. Additionally, the Large Room had a taller form than the rest and an interior ceiling over 9 feet high. Overall, the focus of the rooms was away from the protected court and toward the south patio with views southeast toward the ocean and due east for morning light.

All of these rooms had a finished floor close to the grade so that the transition from inside to outside seems to be without a threshold. Wurster later reflected: “The place is intended as a contrast to

opposite: View through the living room, toward the gallery and court

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T HE EARLY Y EARS 19 2 5 –19 31

the complications of city and professional life and each decision was influenced by a desire for simplicity.” Until the early 1940s—thirteen years after completion—the house had no electricity.5 This country house was a turning point in Wurster’s career. Although it did not gain recognition until 1931 when it won House Beautiful’s Small Home Award, it enabled Wurster to pursue his ideas about simple and practical building. His design ideas were rooted in his rural Californian upbringing, generated first from his admiration of the Craftsman buildings and later expounded in the houses he designed in the hills of Oakland and Berkeley. The Gregory farmhouse eloquently responded to the special climate of the rolling coastal hills with native oaks and manzanita, and it recalled California ranch houses. The house’s studied naturalness reflects Wurster’s innate understanding, as a native son of California, of the underlying intent of traditional building forms and the simplicity of local building practices.

Sally Woodbridge wrote of the house, “It took the body of Modern Architecture and gave it a regional soul.” 6 As with most of his work in this and later periods, Wurster’s design for the Gregory farmhouse was based on an interpretation of the modern family—a family without servants and a family wanting to live in closer relationship to the outdoors. He was not concerned with the notion of a “modern” architecture since his work typically consisted of simplified versions of prevailing accepted styles.

Wurster’s work, although far from other “modern” architectural examples at the time, stood in sharp contrast to popular published work from the East and West coasts that valued the literal revival of traditional styles. In a reflection nearly ten years after the farmhouse’s completion, Wurster wrote to Sarah Gregory, “The sense of the deep inner rightness about the Farm tells of the realization in site, structure and atmosphere, of the richness and the reality of the life around which it was conceived.” 7

left: View of the entry. Bedrooms are at the front and the living room, with a taller roof line and ceiling, is tucked into the corner of the L-shaped plan.

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right: View across the court yard paved with redwood stumps, toward the tower

W. G r e g o r y F a r m h o u s e

top: The farmhouse floor and site plan clearly defined the uses of indoor and outdoor spaces. bottom: The living room, as it was furnished soon after completion.

The floor is made of 12-inch boards and the ceilings are over 10 feet high.

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T HE EARLY Y EARS 19 2 5 –19 31

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The water tower and attached rammed-earth bedroom

W. G r e g o r y F a r m h o u s e

left: The “big room� today right: View from the western bedroom to the covered porch

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19 2 8

Kellam House Santa Barbara, California

This house built in Santa Barbara, California, for the parents of landscape architect Lockwood deForest’s wife, Elizabeth Kellam, was Wurster’s first residential adaptation of what he termed the Monterey style, and the furthest south that Wurster designed homes. Undoubtedly inspired by his knowledge of old California houses in Monterey, Wurster chose to use these simpler influences rather than the more flamboyant Spanish Colonial interpretations prevalent in the area, such as George Washington Smith’s Hope Ranch. Wurster’s instinct for the potential of the site produced a handsome ensemble that was orderly, unforced, and restrained in its fenestration and details.

The house was sited next door to a house that deForest had designed for himself. The compound was established on three acres nestled behind the Santa Barbara Mission. Both houses and their gardens faced northeast toward the dramatic views of Cathedral Peak and the Santa Barbara mountain range. The traditional L-shaped plan

was splayed so that, while shaping the gardens, all rooms could enjoy distant views without looking toward the bulk of the building. The high front porch faced south and furnished welcome shade to the entry and the front court while also providing outdoor access to the second-floor bedrooms and a view to the Pacific Ocean and the vibrant sunsets.

Wurster and deForest attended Berkeley for their last year of schooling in 1919 and along with Thomas Church, became acquainted there.

Wurster was chosen for the commission in part because of this, and in large part because the Kellams received a glowing endorsement from their East Coast acquaintance (and Wurster’s former employer), William Delano.

This was the first of at least ten projects that Wurster and deForest undertook together.

Throughout the years Wurster often referenced his friendships and professional partnerships with the deForests and the Churchs.

opposite, top and bottom: The house seen from the front court yard.

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The roof over the front porch was recently added.

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T HE EARLY Y EARS 19 2 5 –19 31

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Site and floor plan

Kellam House

top: Entry elevation, from Lockwood DeForest Jr.’s adjacent driveway left: The front door, from the entrance court right: Elizabeth Kellam DeForest walking in the new garden

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19 2 8

Hagar House Berkeley, California

Perched on a steep hillside in the Berkeley hills with a commanding view to the south and the west of San Francisco Bay, is the Hagar House, a Mediterranean villa built in 1928. The Hagars wanted a house that “could capture the romantic spirit of California” and said that Wurster’s first sketch was “perfect almost to the finest detail.” 8 The stark simplicity of the entrance court facade belies the gracious and comfortable scale of the interior spaces. The well-proportioned living room with its vaulted, crisply detailed mahogany ceiling and white plaster walls displays Wurster’s sense of simple elegance. The immaculate detailing is characteristic of his tendency to pare away all the unessential elements and “let things be

expressed as they are.” 9 Designed concurrently with the Gregory’s farmhouse in Scott’s Valley, this was to be a city house; a full-time residence, although designed with minimal embellishments, it still is clearly referential to Mediterranean architecture in its massing details and material choices.

Most of the rooms have direct access to the outdoors and natural light from at least two sides. Despite the often-dark interior of traditional Mediterranean architecture, Wurster didn’t compromise the pleasurable qualities of the rooms to suit a formal arrangement for the architecture. Gardens credited to Lockwood deForest have outdoor garden rooms that were an extension of the interior.10

above, left and right: The Hagar House in 1928

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opposite: Side view, present day

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