Beautiful houses are one thing, but adobes are something else. Adobes are to houses what redwoods are to trees. Grand, mysterious and, if built right, capable of withstanding catastrophic natural disasters. If any house has a soul, adobes do. They have thick walls, inset windows, and are as quiet as a library and as inviting as your grandmother's kitchen.
Adobes make sense in Bakersfield.
With their 24-inch walls, one of Cullimores adobes could handle outside temperatures of 110 to 115 degrees and never get over 87 inside. The curious thing about adobes is that they are almost extinct here. There hasn't been one built in Bakersfield for almost 40 years. For one thing, adobe is not recognized by the building codes because it doesn't have any measurable sheer strength or the ability to bend. Cullimore was the Bakersfield version of a Renaissance man.