# 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.

## Biography

Maybeck was born in New York City, the son of a German immigrant and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. 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 a number of other important California architects, including Julia Morgan and William Wurster. In 1951, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects.
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 would be: 1) the primacy of the landscape - geology, flora and fauna were not to be subdued by architecture so much as enhanced by architecture 2) 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 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.
A lifetime fascination with drama and the theater can be seen in much of Maybeck's work. In his spare time, he was known to create costumes, and also designed 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.

## Works

* Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco
* First Church of Christ, Scientist (Berkeley, California)
* Lynwood Pacific Electric Railway Depot, Los Angeles, California
* Automobile dealership, San Francisco
Notable works include:
* Charles Keeler House & Studio (house 1895, studio 1902) — Maybeck's first private client, Berkeley Hills, Highland Place, North Berkeley, California.
* Swedenborgian Church (1895) — 3200 Washington Street at Lyon Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California, NRHP-listed.
* Wyntoon, with architect Julia Morgan (1898−1902) — private estate of Phoebe Apperson Hearst−Hearst family, rural Siskiyou County, California.
* Boke House (1902) — for George Henry Boke (1869–1929), at 23 Panoramic Way, Panoramic Hill Historic District, Berkeley, California.
* Faculty Club (1902, later additions by Maybeck and John Galen Howard) — University of California, Berkeley campus, NRHP-listed.
* Grove Clubhouse−Maybeck Lodge (1903–04) — Bohemian Grove, the Bohemian Club 'campground' on the Russian River, Monte Rio, California.
* Howard B. Gates House (1904) — Mission Revival style, at 62 South Thirteenth Street, San Jose, California.
* The Outdoor Art Club (1904) — 1 West Blithedale Avenue, Mill Valley, Marin County, California, NRHP-listed.
* Hillside Club (1906, rebuilt 1924) — Cedar Street, North Berkeley, a city designated Berkeley Landmark. The original 1906 clubhouse was destroyed in the 1923 Berkeley Fire. Maybeck's brother-in-law, John White, designed the current clubhouse in 1924.
* Andrew Cowper Lawson House (1908) — 1515 La Loma Avenue, Berkeley, California; a Berkeley Landmark
* Goslinsky Residence (1909) — 3233 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, California
* Roos House (1909) — Tudor Revival and other styles, at 3500 Jackson Street at Locust, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California, NRHP-listed & San Francisco Landmark.
* First Church of Christ, Scientist (Berkeley, California) (1910) — 2619 Dwight Way, Berkeley, California, NRHP-listed
* Rose Walk (1912) — public outdoor stairway and landscape, La Loma Park neighborhood in North Berkeley, California.
* Chick House (1913) — for Guy Hyde Chick (1868–1930), in Chabot Canyon of the Berkeley Hills, at 7133 Chabot Road, Oakland Hills district of Oakland, California.
* Temple of Wings (1914, designed in 1911) for Charles Calvin Boynton and Florence Treadwell Boynton, in the La Loma Park neighborhood at 2800 Buena Vista Way, Berkeley, California
* Kennedy-Nixon house (1914, rebuilt 1923) — 1537 Euclid Avenue, La Loma Park district, North Berkeley, Berkeley, California.
** Maybeck Recital Hall (1914, rebuilt 1923) — part of Kennedy-Nixon house complex, Euclid Avenue at Buena Vista Way, North Berkeley.
* Palace of Fine Arts (1915, rebuilt 1965) — Panama-Pacific Exposition building, 3301 Lyon Street, Marina District, San Francisco, California, NRHP-listed.
* Parsons Memorial Lodge (1915) — Sierra Club lodge at Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, California, NRHP-listed.
* Erlanger House (1916) —270 Castenada Avenue, Forest Hill neighborhood, San Francisco, California.
* Lynwood Pacific Electric Railway Depot (1917) — Lynwood, South Los Angeles region, California.
* Byington Ford House (1922) — Pebble Beach, California
* Bernard Maybeck house and studio (1924) — architect's own residence and studio, Maybeck Twin Drive, La Loma Park district, North Berkeley, California.
* Phoebe Hearst Gymnasium for Women, with architect Julia Morgan (1927) — Oxford Street, University of California, Berkeley campus, NRHP-listed.
* Earle C. Anthony Packard Showroom (1927) — Beaux-Arts style, on Van Ness Avenue at Ellis Street, San Francisco, now British Motors, San Francisco Landmark.
* Earle C. Anthony House (1927) — Medieval, Gothic, Spanish and Tudor Revival elements, at 3431-3441 Waverly Drive, Los Feliz district, Los Angeles, California.
       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).
* Earle C. Anthony Packard Showroom (1928), remodel of 1911 Greene and Greene design — on Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, South Park district of Downtown Los Angeles, the present day Packard Lofts condos.
* Associated Charities of San Francisco Building (1928) — 1010 Gough Street at Eddy, San Francisco, the 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
* Principia College Historic District — River Road, Elsah, Illinois, NRHP-listed.
       Maybeck designed the 'English village' campus master plan, and campus buildings including the Colonial Revival style Chapel (1931-34) at 1 Maybeck Place.
* 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.