Bernard Maybeck

Bernard Ralph Maybeck (February 7, 1862 – October 3, 1957) was an American architect. He worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, designing public buildings, including the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and also private houses, especially in Berkeley, where he lived and taught at the University of California. A number of his works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Early life and education Maybeck was born in New York City, the son of a German immigrant, and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France.

Career He moved to Berkeley, California, in 1892. He taught engineering drawing and architectural design at the University of California, Berkeley from 1894 to 1903, and acted as a mentor for some other important California architects, including Julia Morgan and William Wurster.

Maybeck was equally comfortable producing works in the American Craftsman, Mission Revival, Gothic revival, Arts and Crafts, and Beaux-Arts styles, believing that each architectural problem required development of an entirely new solution.

While working in the office of A. Page Brown in San Francisco, Maybeck probably contributed to the Mission Style California Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and was one of the designers of the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church, which included the first Mission Style chair.

For the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, he designed the domed Palace of Fine Arts and also the "House of Hoo Hoo", a "lumberman's lodge" made of rough-barked tree trunks. The Palace of Fine Arts was seen as the embodiment of Maybeck's elaboration of how Roman architecture could fit within a California context. Maybeck said that the popular success of the Palace was due to the absence of a roof connecting the rotunda to the art gallery building, along with the absence of windows in the gallery walls and the presence near the rotunda of trees, flowers and a water feature.

In 1928, he designed the Harrison Memorial Library in Carmel in a Spanish Eclectic style.

In his long-time home city of Berkeley, the 1910 First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley is designated a National Historic Landmark and is considered one of his masterpieces. In 1914, he oversaw the building of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley.

On flatter sites, such as the city of San Francisco, the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Loch Lin General Plan for Principia College in Illinois, his proposals were guided by more formal Beaux Arts planning principles. One of Maybeck's most interesting office buildings is the home of the Family Service Agency of San Francisco at 1010 Gough Street, from 1928, which is on the city's Historic Building Register. Some of his larger residential projects, particularly those in the Berkeley hills such as La Loma Park, have been compared to the ultimate bungalows of the architects Greene and Greene.

Maybeck had many ideas about town planning that he elaborated throughout his career. As a citizen of Berkeley from the 1890s, he was intimately involved in the Hillside Club. His associations and work there helped evolve ideas about hillside communities. Maybeck developed a number of firm beliefs in how civilization and the land should relate to each other. Two overriding principles guided his approach: The primacy of the landscape - geology, flora, and fauna were not to be subdued by architecture so much as enhanced by architecture Roads should pattern the existing grade and not be an imposition upon it

There were other principles he would elucidate, such as a shared public landscape, but these were key, and helped Berkeley evolve into a paradigm for hillside living that was organic and unique.

Maybeck's visions for communities in the East Bay were also a conscientious counterpoint to across the bay where in San Francisco city planning was much more conventional, forced, and regimented into expansive grids of streets. Its grids, imposed in places on very steep grades, resulted in extremely steep streets, sidewalks, and urban transitions, some of which were almost comically so. He also developed a comprehensive town plan for the company town of Brookings, Oregon, a clubhouse at the Bohemian Grove, and many of the buildings on the campus of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.

Personal life A lifelong fascination with drama and the theater is evident in much of Maybeck's work. In his spare time, he was known to create costumes and also design sets for the amateur productions at the Hillside Club.

Bernard Maybeck died on October 3, 1957, aged 95, and is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

Honors In 1951, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects.

Gallery

Notable works Date Work Location Notes 1895, 1902 Charles Keeler House & Studio Berkeley Hills, Highland Place, North Berkeley, California Maybeck's first private client Charles Keeler 1895 Swedenborgian Church 3200 Washington Street at Lyon Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California, California NRHP-listed 1898−1902 Wyntoon Rural Siskiyou County, California With architect Julia Morgan; private estate of Phoebe Apperson Hearst−Hearst family 1902 Boke House 23 Panoramic Way, Panoramic Hill Historic District, Berkeley, California For George Henry Boke (1869–1929) 1902 Faculty Club University of California, Berkeley campus Later additions by Maybeck and John Galen Howard; NRHP-listed 1903–04 Grove Clubhouse−Maybeck Lodge Bohemian Grove, Monte Rio, California Bohemian Club 'campground' on the Russian River 1904 Howard B. Gates House 62 South Thirteenth Street, San Jose, California Mission Revival style 1904 Outdoor Art Club 1 West Blithedale Avenue, Mill Valley, Marin County, California NRHP-listed 1906, rebuilt 1924 Hillside Club Cedar Street, North Berkeley Berkeley Landmark; original 1906 clubhouse destroyed in 1923 Berkeley Fire. Maybeck's brother-in-law, John White, designed current clubhouse in 1924. 1908 Andrew Cowper Lawson House 1515 La Loma Avenue, Berkeley, California Berkeley Landmark 1909 Goslinsky Residence 3233 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, California 1909 Roos House 3500 Jackson Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California Tudor Revival and other styles; NRHP-listed & San Francisco Landmark 1910 First Church of Christ, Scientist (Berkeley, California) 2619 Dwight Way, Berkeley, California NRHP-listed 1913 Chick House 7133 Chabot Road, Oakland Hills district of Oakland, California For Guy Hyde Chick (1868–1930), in Chabot Canyon of the Berkeley Hills; Bay regional shingle style 1914 Temple of Wings 2800 Buena Vista Way, Berkeley, California Designed in 1911 for Charles Calvin Boynton and Florence Treadwell Boynton, in La Loma Park neighborhood 1914, rebuilt 1923 Kennedy-Nixon house 1537 Euclid Avenue, La Loma Park district, North Berkeley, Berkeley, California 1914, rebuilt 1923 Maybeck Recital Hall Euclid Avenue at Buena Vista Way, North Berkeley Part of Kennedy-Nixon house complex 1915, rebuilt 1965 Palace of Fine Arts 3301 Lyon Street, Marina District, San Francisco, California Panama-Pacific Exposition building; NRHP-listed 1917 Lynwood Pacific Electric Railway Depot Lynwood, South Los Angeles region, California 1922 Byington Ford House Pebble Beach, California 1924 Bernard Maybeck house and studio Maybeck Twin Drive, La Loma Park district, North Berkeley, California Architect's own residence and studio 1927 Phoebe Hearst Gymnasium for Women Oxford Street, University of California, Berkeley campus With architect Julia Morgan; NRHP-listed 1927 Earle C. Anthony House 3431-3441 Waverly Drive, Los Feliz district, Los Angeles, California Medieval, Gothic, Spanish and Tudor Revival elements. Later the Countess Bernardine Murphy Donohue estate (c.1950−c.1970) with gardens designed by Florence Yoch & Lucile Council. Later the Convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Cardinal Timothy Manning House of Prayer for Priests complex (1975−2011). 1928 Earle C. Anthony Packard Showroom Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, South Park district of Downtown Los Angeles Remodel of 1911 Greene and Greene design; present day Packard Lofts condos 1928 Associated Charities of San Francisco Building 1010 Gough Street at Eddy, San Francisco Present day Family Service Agency of San Francisco center; San Francisco Landmark

Historic districts with Maybeck-designed works include Panoramic Hill Historic District — in the Berkeley Hills, in Berkeley and Oakland Hills, Oakland, California, NRHP-listed. Maybeck designed residences include the Boke House (1902) at 23 Panoramic Way Professorville Historic District — roughly bounded by Embarcadero Road, Addison Avenue, and Emerson and Cowper Streets, in Palo Alto, California, NRHP-listed. Maybeck designed the "Sunbonnet House" (1899, restored 2004) for Emma Kellogg. Tahoe Meadows Historic District (founded 1924) — first planned open space community in Lake Tahoe region, on US 50 between Ski Run Boulevard and Park Avenue, South Lake Tahoe, El Dorado County, California, NRHP-listed.