Property of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pence, Mill Valley, California | Architects: Robert Marquis and Claude Stoller

10/05/2025 12:51:00 AM

Once in a blue moon, a house is so situated that your first glimpse of it is not a view of the main façade, but of the roof. Such was bound to be the case with any house Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pence might build on the site they had chosen a little promontory jutting out from a mountainside in Mill Valley, Calif., which you approach by a descending road as steep as a toboggan slide. So, their architects. Marquis & Stoller, took great pains to design a house that would present an arresting bird's-eye vista. Actually, it has four roofs, for it is a compound of four pavilions, arranged in a composition which, seen from above has the enchanted faraway air of a tiny village, a Californian Shangri-La.

The resemblance is not accidental, for the Pences, who have an ibex's love of heights, had envisioned for their mountaintop plot a miniature version of James Hilton's "pale pavilions." This, however, was their only flight of fancy. Their other stipulations were down-to-earth: natural materials; easy maintenance; full possession of the view; a strong sense of shelter; a little garden to look at, not to work in: a swimming pool; one big room for living-dining-cooking-study; one big bedroom; a place somewhere for a guest and quarters for their respective hobbies-photography and ceramics.

Out of these clearly defined wants came the plan: one pavilion for living, another for sleeping, a third for guests and hobbies and a fourth for a carport. The major material is redwood in its natural state. The roof shingles are cedar, the easy-to-keep floors are poured concrete (the patio the Pences poured themselves). Despite the fact that they were unbrawny amateurs-he is an English teacher, she, a supervisor of vocational rehabilitation-when it came to physical labor, they made Hercules look like a kitten. They pounded "every nail that doesn't show," built the retaining embankment that surrounds most of the house (the swimming pool excavation supplied the soil and rocks). And they worked like people possessed-goaded not nearly so much by a desire to economize (not that they deprecate a penny saved) as by sheer joyous dedication to the house they had been planning for, saving for and dreaming of for over twelve years.

Each of the four pavilions is square with a pyramidal roof and a deep overhang for protection against sun and wind.

Yet each has a character very much its own. The main living pavilion, is the most open to the countryside, the largest- 23 by 32 feet, and the highest-14 feet from floor to roof-peak where a skylight is perched like a little tent. About half the space is allotted to a living area, half to dining and kitchen. The kitchen, below, is tucked in one corner and screened by an island-counter divider and suspended overhead cabinets. Nowhere are there curtains to dim the unbelievably spectacular view: At night, San Francisco, 35 minutes away, glitters like a vast sprawl of diamonds.

Adjoining the living area, in the lower-ceilinged section that connects living and bedroom pavilions, is the study, below left, a cozy little cave with desk space for each Pence and a bank of shelves for books-American classics for him, sociological studies for her. For both of them-in the end of the wall between study and entrance hall-is a music installation with a double set of controls. The other set is in the master bedroom, left, at the other end of the entrance hall. This second pavilion, 18 feet square, is an agreeable mixture of openness and seclusion. One whole wall and half of another are of glass, floor to ceiling. Most of the other walls are lined with closets, two of which form a niche for the bed and have shelves at the ends that serve as night tables. Sliding doors open on the little court-a garden that is more of a rockery than an Eden. Neither of the Pences is a gardener; they save their leisure for their hobbies, which they pursue on the far side of the court in the studio pavilion -a multipurpose composite of ceramic workshop (with kiln), developing room, guest room (a sleep-sofa does the honors) and bath.

Both indoors and outdoors, the Pences have their choice of cloistered or open space. They can drink in their panorama for as long as they like, then-with the Olympian privilege that comes from owning a mountaintop-turn their backs and work in the studio or sit by the fire, content with the knowledge that a beautiful piece of the world, theirs whenever they want it, lies at their feet.