Michael's Blog

This is one of my favorite places.  Believe it or not this is Berkeley California and not Normandy France.  This was originally an apartment complex designed by William Raymond Yelland for Col. Jack Thornburg (A Student at U.C. Berkeley) after World War i.

The original concept would have been to have had a layer of retail shoppes and restaurants beneath this complex.  The city did not permit mixed use developement at that time and that portion of this was scrapped. I think that it would have been a wonderful place to stroll and meander throughout and dine in a street cafe. 

This complex has gone condominium.  I hope to represent one of these someday.  I also wouldn't mind picking up a unit just for bragging rights.

Enjoy the pictures.  Give comments please!

This is one of my favorite pet peeves.  Inappropriate colors for homes.  If you're gonna be placing your home on the market. 

Make it marketable.

Mission revival homes should only be in shades of a natural adobe.  Colors such as Green, Blue, Gray, Yellow, Pink, Orange and Reds should be avoided.

 blue

 red

 orange

 pink

 green

Anything that is not White, tan or Beige should be seriously rethought out.

There are plenty of opportunities to introduce color to your Mission Revival homes without ruining the appearance of the home.  Trim color of the woodwork, pottery and Malibu tiles can bring in color without overloading.

[photos coming soon of colorful details]

I would like to recommend the book by Arroll Gellner entitled "Red Tile Style: America's Spanish Revival Architecture" .  This book is an excellent resource for the mission revival and for getting it correct.

Getting it right starts with calling the style Mission Revival and not the common "Mediterranean".  Mediterranean should be reserved for building with architectural DNA to the actual region around the Mediterranean Ocean.  Think Portofino, Pompeii, Sicily or Santorini and that is Mediterranean design.

Mission Revival grew out of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego's Balboa Park. The houses were intended to honor the California Missions that were being restored throughout the state at that time.

First of all, I do know how to spell Sequoia.  It's the only word that uses all of the vowels AEIOU.  The region around Oakland California was named after a local indian chief Sequoyah.

I joined the Mid-Century Modern group here at Activerain.  I said I would take some photos of the Eichlers around here.  It was a cold brisk December mid morning when I took these photos, some of the houses are in shadow.

Sequoyah Highlands sits high in the East Oakland Hills above the now closed Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.  The land that Sequoyah Highlands was built on was part of that military complex.

The Streets in this neighborhood all have horse and buggy names such as coach, Phaeton, Shay Surrey and Hansom.  These names were chosen because the streets rotate off of Hansom like a wagon wheel.

Back in 2002 I purchased my membership in the points based timeshare club, Worldmark.  At that time it was managed by the developer Trendwest. a subsidiary of Cendant Corporation.

Cendant also owned Fairfield which is a similar points based timeshare club on the East Coast.  Cendant also owned a string of hotels and motels including Wyndham, Howard Johnson's, Super 8 and Ramada.  They also have one of the large timeshare exchange companies RCI.

The way it works is you buy points from the developer and they in return deed the units over to the club.  Unlike most traditional timeshares where you are locked into a specific week and time at a specific resort, points based timeshares allows you to use your points at any one of their resorts anytime.

It's a pretty good deal if you are flexible with your travel options.

For the cost of a mid-sized Ford sedan. you can have vacations at a resort each year for the rest of your life. I get 15,000 points yearly each September on my anniversary date.  The basic model is for 12,000 points you can stay at least one week each year at any one of their resorts.

Just a partial list of the location of some of their resorts: Lake Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Monterey, Cabo San Lucas, Branson, Taos, Seattle, New Orleans, Anaheim, Orlando, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Fiji.

Each condo has ammenities that you won't find in standardized hotel rooms.  Murphy beds in most of the living rooms provides for additional sleeping capacity. 

Gas BBQ grills on outside decks, where allowed by local codes makes casual dinners and lunches so fun. 

Units have kitchens with refrigerators, stoves, diswashers, microwave ovens, toasters, glasses, dishes, utensils and basic cooking spices.

Most of the condo units have a washer dryer in each unit.  If not, there usually is a free to use laundry room in the facility somewhere.

Some of the newer resorts have very extensive pools and outdoor entertaining areas.  Las Vegas, Indio and Daytona Beach have endless lazy rivers to float around all day long if you so wish to.

Unit sizes range from studio size up to four bedroom presidential penthouse suites.

HTTP://www.worldmarktheclub.com

Worldmark Owners is a seperate forum of members and is not a part of the club.  This freedom allows members to be honest with reviews.  If something needs to be fixed they can speak freely.  The club has a similar forum through their website but, it has been censored from time to time.

HTTP://www.wmowners.com

Having travelled staying in condos, I can't imagine ever staying in a regular hotel again.

Before getting into Real Estate, I spent a year as a home stager.  Superior Avenue Home Staging Co., is the name of my staging company.

I studied the CSP Certified Staging Professionals course. I had Joanne O'Donnell as my teacher and mentor.  It was a very good course on to learn how to stage correctly.

A properly staged home is like magic to the transaction.  I do mean a properly staged home.  I have seen so many homes that are "staged" and they look it.  The key to staging successfully is to make it look as if it wasn't staged at all.  You want to have the home look like it was well maintained, clean and up-to-date.

You want to address all first impression points throughout the home, starting with the curb appeal from the street.  You want to continue the staging all the way to the back fence of the property.

It does not make any sense to stage the home and have some ugly front landscaping.  If the buyers don't stop their cars to look at the home, they won't go inside for a closer look....  It's that plain and simple.   Weeds are your enemy.   Take the garden hose and wash down the home the day before your open house remove dust from window sills.

Inside the home the very first impression, the entry hall is the most important to get right.  It had better be warm and welcoming.  If you're gonna require "shoes off", please, please, please supply a comfy bench for people to sit on while removing their shoes.  Supply a nice basket from Pier 1 or Cost Plus Worldmarket for them to place their shoes in.  Duh

www.pier1.com

www.worldmarket.com

Next address the living room.  Address the focal point of the room (fireplace, view). But make the room look great from the entrance to that room!  Look for a second entrance into that room, from the dining room perhaps, that can also be the first time someone sees that room.  it's important to make the room look great from both first impressions.  If not it will look like the back of a movie set----fancy on one side and plywood, wires, and equipment on the other----not good for real estate.

make the property look like it is someone's home. 

Living rooms = Casual entertaining

Dining rooms = warm intimate gatherings

Master bedrooms = retreat

De-personalize the home

Remove all personal items that will distract the buyer from visualizing their own belongings in the house.  The worst thing is to try to sell your client on a house when "Good old aunt Mildred" is staring back at them from the photos on the wall.

You want to make the home gender neutral.  If you have a listing where you have a widow who has lived alone for 20 years and has no signs of her deceased spouse anywhere in the house.  You have all seen the house, pink walls, flowered wallpaper, gilded mirrors with cherubs!  No man will feel comfortable in the house yet alone buy the place.  The same goes for the opposite of course.  Bachelor pads do not appeal to females, leave the frat house back in your college days.

The home is on the market and should be considered a product or commodity.

De-clutter the home

Square footage sells the house.  If the buyer can't see the square footage, the house will appear smaller than it is.  A home that appears smaller than it actually is will not come across as a value in the comps.

Put in closet organizers in the closets.

Call Portable On-Demand Storage to come out and drop a POD out in the driveway.  Have your clients pre-move out of the house.  They are moving anyway.  Get rid of the off-season clothing.  Get rid of the collections and anything that could be clutter.  It's a great time to have a garage sale, ask your Realtor for loaner directional signs.

enough for today......

Let's have some fun.  Here are some floor plans that I did for the Storybook homeowners club.

I thought up the above little clinkerbrick cottage as an in-law residence.  It could also be a student residence.

The larger home pictured above based on some yelland designs.  The bedroom and bathrooms on the left side of the home stack with the first and second floor being identical for that half the home.

The above home was a fun design to do.  It's a tri-level home.  It has a bee-hive corner fireplace out of clinkerbricks.  This home can be used on a corner lot.

I like the concept of a great room living space.  I thought that storybook gothic would lead to that really well.  Can you imagine the vaulted ceiling?

I also like the two smaller bedrooms sharing the bathroom off the hallway.  Each of those two smaller bedrooms (no1 & no2) have their own patio balconies.  The master bedroom has a large walk-thru closet and a fun tacked on shed roof window seat.

The above home is based on the Tupper and Reed Building in downtown Berkeley by Yelland.

A hillside home with a great room again.  This time the bedroom wing stacks on top of itself to create a second floor of bedrooms.  Built in two car garage lower on the slope.

What's with my Activerain/localism username: Historytours?  Well, I am going to be putting my architectural history knowledge to good use by offering monthly guided tours. 

I have lots of experience giving tours. I have been a docent at Oakland's Dunsmuir Historic Estate for over 21 years now.

Storybook Homes Tour:  This tour is the one that I am offering currently. I have studied this style of home for over 5 years now and I most comfortable given this tour.  We will see homes by W.w. Dixon, Carr Jones, Derry, Weaver & Derry and W.R. Yelland. (lunch stop at Beckett's Irish Pub, a building by Yelland)

Art Deco Tour: Downtown Oakland's Art Deco District and Art Deco Homes, businesses and Monuments around the Bay Area.  A stop by the Alameda Point area, the former Naval Air Station yeilds a wealth of Streamline Moderne.  We will try to time this tour to coorespond to the Paramount Theaters tours.  More extras possible.

Craftsman Tour: Not all the craftsman style homes are in Pasadena.  We'll hunt out this beautiful home style around the Bay Area.

The above illustration appeared in the November 20th, 1941 edition of the Oakland Tribune.  Because of the date two weeks before Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of World War II.  It is doubtful whether this exact building was ever built.

However, the homes in Alameda's Southshore neighborhood appear to share architectural DNA to the 1941 design above.  These homes built around 1955, 14 years later even share the horizontal siding of the original design.  The two car tandem garage in the original design was streched forward to be two garage/carports sharing a large open entrance atruim.

Federal Realty Building

Year Built 1914

Oakland, California

Telegraph Avenue and Broadway

A local landmark.  Like the Flatiron Building in New York City, the Federal Realty Building is a triangular shaped building located at a Gore point of two of the major roads in Downtown Oakland Broadway and Telegraph Avenue. 

Along the left side of the building is Telegraph Avenue which runs from this spot in Downtown Oakland and ends at the Famous Souther Gate at the U.C. Berkeley Campus.   Along the right side of the building is Broadway which starts at Oakland's Jack London Square and ends in the Oakland hills near the Caldecott Tunnel

Changing topic to something near and dear to my heart, care-giving. 

We as real estate professionals with good incomes (hopefully and with fingers crossed) should help take care of those in our society, that have given up their lives to take care of our loved ones.  I would like to see agents have gift cards in their wallets and purses for dinners out, movies or groceries.  When we come across someone in that role we should whip out the cards and make their day and let them know that others care about them.

Back in the day I was a mechanical design engineer in San Jose's Silicon Valley.  I was working from 7am to 10:30pm and then commuting back to San Leandro.  It made for some very long days.  I hardly ever saw my family.

I had long been a financial caregiver for my parents.  My handicapped father was laid off of his job when he was late fifties.  No employers wanted to hire a handicapped person nearing retirement.  He operated his own business for several years, but was never overly successful at it.  Greenslade Drafting & Design was the name of his company.

Back in 1966 my father was the victim of a violent crime.  He was the silent partner in a sporting goods store.  He was visiting his partner that afternoon and working in the work room at the back of the store.  He heard the chimes over the door announce the entrance of a customer.  He entered the showroom from the back room and found his partner Jeff Montgomery at gunpoint.  My father walked right into an armed robbery.  The criminals turned their guns on my father and shot.

To this day my father still has to wear abdominal bandages and binders because of the wound drains.

My mother had always been my father's medical watchdog and caregiver assisting my father whenever she could.  In 2001, shortly after September 11th, my father suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed his left side.  My mother stepped up the plate and took over dad's medical care-giving.  I was still still supplying financial support for my parents.

Well,  all those long hours away from my family working in Silicon Valley took it's toll on me.  I told the people at Foundry Networks to take the job, the hours, the lack of respect and to shove it.  

I left Silicon Valley behind and took a job as a kitchen designer at Home Depot. I had always had a passion to work with homes.  If you've been readying my blog, you'd know that I have been an amateur architectural historian specializing in Storybook Style homes of the 1920s and 1930s.  Working at Home Depot gave me eight hours a day and no over-time.  More importantly I was only five minutes across town if my parents needed me.

In 2005, my mother was diagnosed with Colon Cancer.  The medical care-giver had also become a patient.  It was my new duty to become both the financial care-giver and the medical care-giver to both of my parents now.

Mother had her cancer surgery and was left with a colostomy bag attached to her side.  She underwent two really nasty chemotherapy rounds each lasting over six months.

At one point I had to take a medical leave of absence from Home Depot and be at my parents side 100% of the time.   I can't begin to tell you how many times I had to call the ambulances for Mom or Dad.

I have two brothers, Raymond and Bill.  Bill lives in Fairbanks Alaska.  Raymond lives in Tracy California.  Bill raises and races sled dog teams and doesn't have two nickels to rub together.  I don't fault him for not being able to assist mother and father more than he does.  Raymond is busy with his job at Kaiser Permanente Heath-care System.  Raymond is in charge of a large portion of Northern California Telecom construction.  Raymond is busy, but I wish he could at least buy some monthly groceries for the parents.

Anyway.

Having gone from Silicon Valley, to Home Depot, to Medical Leave, to Part-Time Home Depot and then to unemployment (Home Depot did not want to have part time kitchen designers and I was given the choice of working in the appliance department of leaving....I left.  I did not want to schlep side-by-side refrigerators on to carts when I had heavy lifting to do at home too).   I know first hand what a financial hardship it is for care-givers to give up their lives to help for loved ones.  I went through my entire life savings and my IRA account to continuing supporting my parents.

While mother was at the oncologists office getting her infusions of chemotherapy, I was sitting across from her in the care-giver seats, reading my real estate text books preparing for the day when I would emerge from the role of double care-giver.

Mom got really bad with her last chemo treatment and nearly died.  My brothers, my dad, sisters-in-law and most importantly mom all agreed that we would stop the chemo and go with GOD.  The doctors only gave her about three days to live.  Almost two years later she is doing fine.  She has a paralyzed left had from a terrible night of endless blood clots and surgeries.  She is a real trooper.

I passed my DRE test first time out.  All of that studying paid off and I got my new gig at Prudential California Realty in Alameda.

Getting back to my point that I started off with. 

We as real estate professionals with good incomes (hopefully and with fingers crossed) should help take care of those in our society, that have given up their lives to take care of our loved ones.  I would like to see agents have gift cards in their wallets and purses for dinners out, movies or groceries.  When we come across someone in that role we should whip out the cards and make their day and let them know that others care about them. I particularly like the idea of giving gift cards to restaurants and movies,  something to give the care-giver a brief respite escape.  If only someone would have a gift card for a back-up caregiver to allow the person a true rest.

Enough, enough, enough

Okay, where I left off we were in Oakland's Lakeshore Highlands with two Yellands on one street.

If we go back up into the hills into the Piedmont Pines neighborhood we will come across the Hildreth Residence.  It was featured in Sunset Magazine for being a unique use of a down sloping lot. The article, "They Park their car in their Attic" was about the home.

The home is very unique looking from the street.  The home shows a shift from the traditional sloping catslide roofline and into a more angular version of the roofline. The home is in a word a cubist version of what the earlier storybook home had been in the 1920s and early 1930s. Off of the sidewalk features a small tower down to the lower living level of the home.  The siding of this tower are alternating zig-zag black and white siding.

I have dubbed this style of Yelland to be "Hyper-Geometry".  What I call the "Puzzle Houses" is an off shoot of "Hyper-Geometry".

In the town of Hayward on Prospect Avenue is the Peter C. Hoare Residence.  This property, I suspect Yelland to be the architect.  It is what I like to think of being on the drawing boards at the same time.

 [Peter C. Hoare Residence]

The Peter C. Hoare Residence is one of the puzzle houses.  I think at this point I should explain what a puzzle house is.  A puzzle house is a home that is made up of several elevations of different houses stuck together forming one larger home.  (If you imagine Main Street at Disneyland all the smaller facades at the street front and one unified building behind them)

Well, the Hayward Hoare House (there I said it.  Hoare House) is made up of the houses on my street, including the Derry house, my neighbor's house and my house.  element by element, but in mirror image.

For example on my street (Superior Avenue) right to left

1. buttress

2. window

3. fireplace

4. window

5. door

6. dormer

7. fireplace

8. catslide roof

9. wall

10. gable (represents Master Bedroom of Hoare Residence)

On the Hayward Hoare Residence. left to right.

10. gable (represents garage of Derry Residence)

9. wall

8. catslide roof

7. fireplace

6. dormer

5. door

4. window

3. fireplace

2. window

1. butress

Okay. I am sure I have just confused everyone.  It becomes clear that the homes on my street, which are rather ordinary house by house, but when viewed as a collection that they were designed as an entire streetscape.  The Puzzle houses being a snapshot of that streetscape.

I'll look for some better photos (4-14-2008 posted new photo of San leandro)

I would like to share with everybody the West Baden Springs Hotel in West Baden Indiana.  Built in 1902 this hotel was for a while the 8th wonder of the modern world. 

http://www.frenchlick.com/_images/_design/new_photos/west_baden_3.jpg

It's central atrium which was 200 feet in diameter and was capped by a huge dome 10 stories tall.  The central atrium was called the Pompeii Court.  The dome was the largest un-supported dome in the world until the Houston Astrodome opened in 1962.

Six stories of rooms have windows over looking the interior of the Pompeii Court.  The Pompeii Court is ringed with massive faux marble columns holding up the massive dome.  Beneath your feet the Pompeii Court contained a massive mosaic tile floor containing over a million tiles.

The Hotel was designed by architect Harrison Albright.  Albright was most famous for his work with John D. Spreckles (one time owner of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego).  Harrison Albright designed the Spreckles Organ pavillion in San Diego's Balboa Park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Albright

Recently the West Baden Springs Hotel and it's neighboring French Lick Springs Hotel were unified.  Together the two historic hotels under went a 380 million dollar restoration.  A Casino was added to the  French Lick Springs Hotel. 

<some background about my connection> The way I found this hotel was when I was researching the itnerary for a trip that I gave my father.  Back in 1996 I gave my father a trip back to the region in Southern Indiana where our family pioneered several of the small towns. My father was heavy into geneology at that time and it was a great trip for him.  My family help found the nearby towns of Livonia, Mitchell, Campbellsburg and Hardinsburg Indiana.

okay....

so where did I leave off?  Clarksburg California in the Sacramento Delta.  Great little town.  So there I am in this little town and I am surrounded by homes that look like they would fit onto my street back in San Leandro. Some of the homes even appear to share some "architectural DNA" to my parent's home, the Derry House.

So I am thinking that there must be something to this entire Yelland connection. This starts me on going out on weekends Yellanding, looking for home archived in the collections of U.C. Berkeley.  This journey takes me all over Northern California from as far North as Chico, Ca. and as far South as Monterey, Ca.

 In Chico he did the Chico Trinity Church at the corner of Fifth and Flume Streets.  A very nice building.  I Marysville he did the Sui Sing Benevolent Society Building.  In Auburn he did the Hislop Funeral Parlour, which is now the Chapel of the Hills.

In Modesto are some of his nicest buildings.  The Ritter and Wherry residences on Elmwood Court.  Wow these are some very nice Yelland styled homes.  A local builder made modern interpretive copies of them in a tract off of Orangeburg Avenue.

In Kensington, the homes along Coventry Road's 800 block are by him as well.  The home at the corner of Ardmore and Coventry is particularly beautiful in his earliest Storybook Style.  The home on Ardmore walk the Troxel Residence is very very nice as well and very much in his signature style.

In North Berkeley on Cragmont Avenue is a whole string of his designed homes with the crowning achievement being the Zoph Residence at the Acacia Walk.  (Public walkways appear to be a common thread for tracts with his involvement as part of the city beautiful movement at the turn of the century).

In Central Berkeley is his masterpiece Normandy Village apartment complex (now gone condo). This was originally known as Thornburg Village named after his client Col. Jack Thornburg.  This is a very neat place to google earth, Street scene on google maps.  It must be seen to be believed.

Also in Central Berkeley is the Tupper & Reed Music Store.  This building is now home to the Beckett's Irish Pub & restaurant.  This building is absolutely incredible.  It has a towering 4 story tall clinker-brick fireplace crowned with a 10 foot tall pied-piper weather vane. This building in the middle of a block on Shattuck Avenue has small courts on the left and right sides making this building look as if it standing alone. These courtyards provide the excellent location for exterior staircases to the second floor.  The building can be leased as a whole or leased as two separate businesses, very clever!

Seeing the Montclair library in person only confirmed the DNA to the Derry House.  Mrs Fischer, the partner of Chauncey Gibson responsible for getting the library built for the Oakland Children's club, had a home designed by W.R.Yelland....Hmmmm.  Do you suppose that one of the sketches for the proposed Fischer Residence was used as the inspiration for C.C. Rosenberry to design the library?  It's my guess that the answer to that question would be YES.

In Piedmont is the the Erskine Mansion, this home is monumental in scale and composition. This mansion sits high atop the best street in the best neighborhood in the East Bay.  This home is like Normandy Village but as a single residence, it has some fantastic detail.

In Oakland's Lakeshore Highlands is the home on Alma Place.  I have been fortunate enough to be holding this home open lately to secure the buyers for my friend listing agent Dona Pedvin.

Also just down the street is another home I just recently discovered is also a verifiable Yelland.  That house at the end of the street is in sad sad shape.  It's painfully clear that the people who have it don't have a clue as toward it's heritage and are in the process of gutting it and muckking it up.

well, I'll end it here today

Okay,

Here goes my first blog entry on ActiveRain.

So I guess this is where I get to tell you about myself.... How boring is that.  I would rather talk about houses and Real Estate.

I am a huge fan of what has become known recently as "Storybook Style" homes.  This term came about due to the title of Arroll Gellner's excellent Coffee Table Book

 "Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the 1920s and 1930s"

I am one of the original members of Storybookers Yahoo group.  This group is an offshoot of John Robert Marlow's website Storybookers.  John is an science fiction author who lives in the Los  Angeles area and is equally as intereseted in Storybook Style.   I was one of the early scouts for his website and photographed many homes here in Northern California.

So, How exactly did I get so involved in this obscure architectural style?  I grew up in a home by Derry, Weaver and Derry.  To be more precise, I grew up in the home that Earl Derry built for himself and his wife Stella.  The Derry's lived there until 1946 when my grandmother Agnes purchased the house from him.  My father grew up in the house.  In 1962, my grandmother passed away and my parents inherited the home.  So this special home is the home I grew up in.

If you live outside of San Leandro, you probably have never heard of Earl Derry and his partners, brother Harold Thomas Derry and Brother in-law Phileas Beecher Weaver.  The pretty much built the majority of homes in the North East quarter of San Leandro. These are the Storybook Style homes in "The Broadmoor" and "Estudillo Estates" neighborhoods.  The also did homes in Hayward and near the Sequoyah Country Club in Oakland.  They also built home in the Lealand Heights neighborhood and Lebrun neighborhoods which have become parts of the Bay-o-vista neighborhood.

So, growing up in the builder/developer's own home, I always new we had a special home.  It sat on a double lot on one of the better streets in town "Superior Avenue".  The home has a big swoopy roof and a huge picture window and a towering fireplace to the right side and a low lying wing off to the left side.  Around the big picture window are bricks in a keystone style of pattern.

Then came the fire on Lewis Avenue behind our house.  It was Saint Patrick's Day in about 2002.  Father hadn't been home too long from the hospital from his stroke.  He doesn't move too well still.  We had gone out to dinner at Harry's Hof Brau and just gotten home.  (i'll have to blog about caregiving sometime) Rhea, our neighbor down the street rang our doorbell and was banging on our front door.  We opened the door and see told us that our tree was on fire.

Well, it wasn't our tree but the tree belonged to the house behind us on Lewis Avenue.  Not only was their 60 foor redwood or pine tree on fire but so was their garage.  It was a very windy march 17 night and the embers from the fire were flowing over home's roof like a river of lava from a hawaiian volcano.

due to additions in the 1980's to add-on some senior housing my my dad's aunt marie our home that once had a detached garage was now attached. The fire was only a few feet from the back of our garage.  Did I mention that our neighbor thought at one time it was a good Idea to store gas cans behind his (now buring) garage and the back fence.

The fire department all came down the wider more convenient Superior Avenue and came down our driveway to battle the fire.  Thanks to the gallant effort of the San Leandro Fire Department our house was saved.

The fire was a Sunday night and on that Wednesday night, my mother and I docented up at the Historic Dunsmuir Estate for an architectural history professor from San Francisco.  He gives tours of the mansion once a year to his classes.  After the tour, we asked him about this big swoopy roof, tall fireplace and wing off to the left side.  He went on to describe other features of our house to us.  It turns out we had a Storybook Style home. He recommended the Arroll Gellner book to us.

So I got a copy of the book through amazon.com and I start flipping through the pages of the book.  I was really not seeing too much similarities to the Hansel and Gretel Cottages pictured in the book.  Until that is until I came across the photo of the Montclair Library of the Oakland Public Library system.  It was practically a mirror image of our beloved home.

The caption was about 3 inches long beneath the photo.  It turns out that the Montclair Library was designed by somebody named C.C. Rosenberry who worked with Children's Charities in Oakland.  He designed it for a Chauncy Gibson and Mrs. Chas. Fischer of Kensington.  The Montclair Library was based on earlier works by an architect W.R. Yelland.

Ah-ha.

So, library 1930, our home 1927...earlier.  So I started researching William Raymond Yelland.  It turns out he's a famous arts & Crafts architect who's selected blueprints are in the collections of U.C. Berkeley.  Very good.  So I contact the U. C. Berkely architectural achives and start researching.  Armed with their listing of home in the collection I started many weekends of what I know call Yellanding.

The little Sacramento Delta town of Clarksburg according to the archive listings was a hot bed of Yelland Design.  The community church, the sugar refinery mill and about nine registered homes all by Yelland.  Hmmm sounds like a good place to start if any.   Well, we get into Clarksburg and the town looks like my neighborhood. These swooping roofs, called catslide roofs, are all over this town.  some of the houses look like they share an architectural DNA to our home.  Very positve.   Okay so now I am stoked about this.

More to come in next entry. 

If you need to contact me about this posting and have any questions call me, I,d love to talk about this subject.

510 334-7800