The Jay-Blog

My house is an hour's walk uphill from the campus. Today's walk took me past the late David Brower's house, the birthplace of Pete Seeger, and the home of a Nobel laureate, but that's not the meaningful part of my walk. I went by the Boynton's! But that's not the really cool part either. What added the ecstasy to my jaunt was walking by the houses Bernard Maybeck designed after the fire. These include his studio, the house he built for his children, and the house where he and his wife Annie lived and died (in the mid-fifties.) Nestled along Buena Vista Way are some of the most charming houses imaginable. There's no other spot like this on earth. I had my camera in my pocket. Let me show you what I saw. Most of these were built in the thirties and forties. I had a wonderful time.

The first Maybeck house I came to sits where Buena Vista Way dead-ends at Euclid Avenue. Maybeck designed the large room in front as a recital room for the house's piano-playing owner; that's what's behind those blue curtains.

Some Maybeck trademarks: the broken pediment of the roof. (This reminds me of the roofs of cabins made of Lincoln Logs, with the roof clearly something apart from the rest of the building, sort of laid on top as an afterthought. It emphasizes the building.) Look at the detail shot of the carvings on the balcony. Actually, they're castings. After the devastation of the fire, Maybeck constructed many things from fireproof concrete. This house is truly one-of-a-kind; the pieces seem familiar but the package is unique.

A few blocks up the street -- and I do mean up; I was huffing and puffing -- this charming little house sits at the corner of LaLoma and Buena Vista. Look at the windows in this place. I hope a painter or someone else who appreciates natural light lives here. I should note that I have no qualms about manipulating photographs to show what I want you to see. The signs in front of this pretty house had to go. I made things brighter, too.

Up LaLoma to the left is a lesser-known Maybeck landmark. He constructed this concrete palette to hold his commission for designing an automobile showroom on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco -- a Packard. (Last time I dropped in, they were selling Bentleys and Maseratis.) Up until World War II, it was illegal to park automobiles on the streets of Berkeley overnight.

Down LaLoma in the opposite direction is one of my all-time favorite Maybecks. It makes me feel like I'm in Italian Switzerland. The monotony of the concrete is broken up with coloring and sfa'graffiti. See the balcony at the back? That's a sleeping porch. The climate is temperature here year-round. (We always sleep with the bedroom window open.) Fifty years ago, it wasn't just the homeless who slept outdoors.

Around the corner is Maybeck's studio. It's hard to separate nature from building. That's the idea. Maybeck had a thing for pink. There are no sidewalks in this neighborhood, but when Maybeck had a hand in building sidewalks, he always called for some pink dye to be mixed in the concrete. Note the appearance of the exterior walls. To provide texture, he covered them with concrete-soaked burlap bags.

A couple of houses up is yet another Maybeck, this one somewhat hidden from view. The owner once told us that the open beams in the cathedral ceiling were made with untreated wood. One warm summer, pupae began to rain down in the living room. This house was in such disrepair that one day a recent buyer heard a loud noise and discovered that the entire bathroom had rotted away and fallen off the house. I like the rustic garage, which faces on Maybeck Twin Drive, so named for Maybeck's twins.

Across the street and up a few doors is the house Maybeck build for himself and Annie to live in after the great fire of '23. The hill is steep on that side of the road, and the slope hides the house from view. It's sufficiently steep that you can walk from street level into the second story of the house via a small footbridge, not an uncommon feature in hilly Berkeley today. Note the chimney. Looks quaint. Concrete. Capped with a permanent spark arrester. Another Maybeck trademark. (Law in incendiary Berkeley now requires Spark arresters.)

A couple of houses up is the Boynton house, the Temple of Wings. Unfortunately, solid walls have replaced the canvas ones. I didn't see any young ladies dancing in diaphanous gowns either. This town's getting so tame.

The views from up here are magnificent. That's Marin County in the distance. With a few exceptions, developers didn't get much further up the hill until Maybeck had stopped working. I'm starting to breathe hard and telling myself I must walk briskly up hills if I am ever going to lose the thirty extra pounds I'm carrying around.

A few blocks up, someone has built a Tuscan castle with views from south of Oakland to north of the Bay.

I don't know about you, but my mind is always jumping around. When I take time to reflect on something, I learn. When I take photos, their afterimages leave impressions. Patterns emerge. The Boyntons and today's bohemians, both flaunting convention and sleeping in the elements. The shift in Maybeck?s work following the fire. The echoes of Bernard Maybeck in more recent houses and landscapes all around me. My affection for the unconventional and neighbors who build castles, domes, bale houses, and shingled cottages. And I invariably see things I'd never noticed before.