99 Rock Rd, Kentfield, CA 94904
David
For sale: Home in Kentfield, CA
Re: For sale: Home in Kentfield, CA
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Greenbrae/99- ... ome/982129
Have to wonder who was responsible for the original house. While the entrance gate, front door, and fireplace hood are most likely replacements (or I'd like to think so, anyway), the layout, materials and details speak of someone special, with Wrightian undertones. Too geometrically irregular to be John M Davis (whose home court this occupies) and not pure enough to be Jack Hillmer--so who is it ?
S
Have to wonder who was responsible for the original house. While the entrance gate, front door, and fireplace hood are most likely replacements (or I'd like to think so, anyway), the layout, materials and details speak of someone special, with Wrightian undertones. Too geometrically irregular to be John M Davis (whose home court this occupies) and not pure enough to be Jack Hillmer--so who is it ?
S
Re: For sale: Home in Kentfield, CA
The original house, modest in size but luxurious in style, materials and siting, was designed in 1955 by Mary Summers, who was not an architect but the Planning Director for the County of Marin. It was built at that time for husband Harold and herself. Mary Summers and Supervisor Vera Schultz of Mill Valley were pivotally instrumental in successfully advocating and promoting Marin County's procurement of Wright’s services in 1957 such that he would be the architect for the Civic Center. There is a long story associated with that.
Wright spent the night of July 31st, 1957 in Mary and Harold’s little guest room and actually signed the contact for the Civic Center commission in this house.
I became friends with Mary and another family member in the early 1970s and after her retirement visited her numerous times through my work as Taliesin’s local affiliate for Marin County Civic Center projects and various associated activities. In those days the house still consisted of one bedroom and one bath with just the guest bedroom and its bath in an alcove off of the Living Room. There was a detached carport as I remember it, and the little “guest house” that pre-existed the 1955 construction was retained and used by Mary as a studio for her post-retirement landscape design consulting and as guest quarters for visiting members of hers and husband Harold’s families.
After Mary died in the late-1980s, I was tempted to buy it–I more than my wife Trisha, because one problem it posed was that it was it too small–at least not suitably arranged for us and our two little children. Trisha thought that detail was important. I might have lived there under any circumstances, because it was so gorgeous, with a drop-dead view of Mount Tamalpais, but I capitulated, and we didn’t.
What we knew has since been swallowed up or gussied up, i. e., elaboration of the L. R. fireplace hood, the fancy new entrance gate and, of course, the addition of more than five thousand additional square feet of living space. On a now-removed dividing element between the original kitchen and dining area there was rare curly grain redwood used for cabinet doors harvested from tree trunk buttresses that had been found on old, left-behind stumps of logged ancient trees.
WJS
Wright spent the night of July 31st, 1957 in Mary and Harold’s little guest room and actually signed the contact for the Civic Center commission in this house.
I became friends with Mary and another family member in the early 1970s and after her retirement visited her numerous times through my work as Taliesin’s local affiliate for Marin County Civic Center projects and various associated activities. In those days the house still consisted of one bedroom and one bath with just the guest bedroom and its bath in an alcove off of the Living Room. There was a detached carport as I remember it, and the little “guest house” that pre-existed the 1955 construction was retained and used by Mary as a studio for her post-retirement landscape design consulting and as guest quarters for visiting members of hers and husband Harold’s families.
After Mary died in the late-1980s, I was tempted to buy it–I more than my wife Trisha, because one problem it posed was that it was it too small–at least not suitably arranged for us and our two little children. Trisha thought that detail was important. I might have lived there under any circumstances, because it was so gorgeous, with a drop-dead view of Mount Tamalpais, but I capitulated, and we didn’t.
What we knew has since been swallowed up or gussied up, i. e., elaboration of the L. R. fireplace hood, the fancy new entrance gate and, of course, the addition of more than five thousand additional square feet of living space. On a now-removed dividing element between the original kitchen and dining area there was rare curly grain redwood used for cabinet doors harvested from tree trunk buttresses that had been found on old, left-behind stumps of logged ancient trees.
WJS
Re: For sale: Home in Kentfield, CA
Bill's illustration, a published plan of the house annotated with an overlay of the original extent of construction and other data:
S
S
Re: For sale: Home in Kentfield, CA
Bill, thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience of the home. It's good to know that it was well loved - at least up until the "reno-splosion" took place.
David
David