As the demand for second houses has grown, vacation sites have correspondingly shrunk, but lakeside cottages, cheek by jowl, or dune bungalows in close parade rarely offer the seclusion so highly valued in a vacation retreat. This ubiquitous problem was neatly side-stepped, however, by the house that California designer John Carden Campbell built for himself on a 60-by-60-foot lot in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Instead of looking outward, his house turns inward to face a glass-walled court that brings the outdoors into the very heart of the building. Open to the sky and lush with plants and flowers in pots and tubs, the court is like an enchanting garden. Yet it is an inseparable part of the house and through its glass walls you can see the whole 32-by-40-feet of interior as one flowing space—a continuity which is emphasized by the use of the same flooring throughout. The walls and ceiling as well as the floor are all of 2-by-6-inch tongue-and-groove white fir planks, nailed to a post and beam framework, and the whole structure rests on ready-made concrete piers. As a happy result of this simple construction, the architect was able to build the house for approximately $7,800.

Since the court brings light and air to the whole house, there are only four exterior windows. Two at the front are fitted with obscure glass jalousies that let in air but screen from sight a neighboring house. At the back, glass doors flanked by a pair of clear windows take in an unobstructed view of lush green valley and rolling hills which you can see through the court as you come in the front door. 

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source: House and Garden Magazine | June 1962

Anyone who ever spent a childhood summer rambling among the rocks by a wild seacoast, discovering the treasures of the tide pools or wading in the surging waves, can imagine the delight of architect Fletcher Ashley's four young daughters with the house their father built in Ogunquit, Me. Dubbed "The Rockhouse," it perches high on a cliff that plunges 30 feet down to the Atlantic below, commanding superb views from every room and from the decks that surround it. On the big rear deck that extends out over the rocks, you might think you were on a ship, with nothing in sight but the expanse of sea and an occasional lobster boat. But from the screened porch and the smaller deck that hugs the house, you survey the ancient rocks and magnificent pines.

A sliding glass door opens directly from the entrance walk into a living room so big and so carefree it seems less like a room than a large and delightful recreation area. The opposite wall composed entirely of sliding glass doors opens the room to the porch and deck. At the right of the front door is a series of folding birch doors that close off the kitchen section. The length of the living room serves as a buffer between the girls' rooms at one end and their parents' at the other. Mr. and Mrs. Ashley's own quarters include a spacious bedroom, dressing room, the bonus of a screened sleeping porch. 

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source: House and Garden Magazine | June 1962

Terraces, one or many, are most successful, most rewarding in terms of pleasure, when they are indivisible from the houses they complement. If they reflect, as they should, the nature of the rooms they adjoin, and share the same purpose they can be as much a part of the house as its roof, and as varied in mood as the pattern of indoor living to which they correspond. This is beautifully illustrated by the house of many terraces in Longmeadow, Mass., that architect Elroy Webber designed for Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kuzon. Its over-all plan developed naturally from the device the architect used to cope with the undulating site: a raised rectangular platform to hold both house and terraces. 

The platform is as wide (104 feet) as its wedge-shaped plot will permit it to be, and as deep (80 feet) as it needs to be to provide all the living space, indoor and outdoor, that the Kuzons require and enjoy. In dramatic reversal of the Mediterranean house that surrounds its courtyards, this house is surrounded by a geometric girdle of five terraces. Glass walls, except on the street side of the house, permit perfect visual flow between the rooms and the adjacent terraces, while each terrace exists as an exterior complement to the room or rooms on the other side of the glass. Thus, covered or not, the house really begins at the perimeter of the platform. This romantic concept emphatically contradicts the view of New England as a stern country where home planners, out of deference to the elements, must place practicality first. The Kuzons' house is eminently practical, but its outdoor rooms add to its indoor living the delights of being surrounded by walls of greenery and treillage in summer, and by a sculptured overlay of snow-capped evergreens in winter.

THICK woods near South Hadley, Mass., supplied the site for this house which was designed for Dr. Virginia Galbraith, professor of economics at Mt. Holyoke College. The particular delight that Dr. Galbraith wanted was the airy sense of invisible shelter provided by a glass house in the middle of the woods. That, in essence, is what she has—enhanced by a refinement in privacy proposed by her architect.

The house is not large—1,052 square feet of living space, plus a partial basement—but it is large enough for Dr. Galbraith's needs as well as for entertaining as many as seventy-five guests at one time. The main living area, left, has floor-to-ceiling walls of glass on four sides. But the 36-foot expanse of glass at the back of the house, above, faces a 600-acre tract of oak and birch owned by the college and therefore completely secluded. And the front of the house, which is set back 50 feet from the road on a downward slope, is screened by apple trees, dogwood and hemlocks. Because of the trees, Dr. Galbraith says, she never feels exposed. Nevertheless, her architect advised total privacy for the bedroom area—“and my architect,” she agrees, “was right.” Three walls of the bedroom itself are windowless, and although the fourth is glass, it faces a patio with high walls on two sides. But the patio is open to the woods at the back, so that even in her bedroom Dr. Galbraith enjoys the luxuriousness of a house set in the woods.

She was delighted to find that in spite of her glass walls and the rigors of Massachusetts’ winters, the house does not cost a fortune to heat. In winter, when the trees are bare, the sun warms the house so well that the forced-air heating system rarely turns on during the day. In summer, the heavy foliage holds back the sun so that the bedroom-patio area is often 5° to 8° cooler than outside.

Above all, Dr. Galbraith enjoys the elegance and drama of the house and the beauty of its proportions—along with its intimate relationship to the outdoors.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | August 1962

Do you measure bigness in a house in terms of square feet or by the number of rooms? Can a four-room house work and feel like one with twice that many? The answer is yes, when the interior space is handled as skillfully as it is in Mr. and Mrs. Donald Sheff's house in Great Neck, N. Y. The house has exactly four rooms plus a kitchen and two baths. Nonetheless, it fits the young couple's needs and wants like a beautifully tailored glove and gives them 2,050 square feet of highly personalized pleasure.

Enormously energetic, the Sheffs have widely ranging interests that keep them chronically busy both at home and in the business world. They work as a team at an enterprise involving a series of secretarial schools. They entertain often, with pleasure and with distinction, since Mrs. Sheff is a gourmet cook to whom dinner for two is as important as a buffet for thirty. Both she and her husband love flowers and gardening (given the time), bright colors and, almost more than anything, the serenity of spaciousness and the delight of vista.

It took them a long time to pin down what they wanted in a house. Fascinated by architecture, in an unpedantic way, they read seriously on the subject, visited new houses right and left. Armed, finally, with a clear awareness of their values and preferences, they asked their architect, George Nemeny, for a home that would be satisfying to the eye, amenable to their pattern of living and easy to keep up. And Mr. Nemeny, sensitive to their idiosyncrasies, designed them a remarkably simple house that imposes no jurisdictions. Each room is large enough to work as two, and does. All the walls work, too—instead of merely dividing space, they also accommodate floor-to-ceiling storage. Ceilings are 10 feet high (in the living room, a vaulted skylight lifts the eye 2 feet higher) and glass walls extend each room out to a terrace and to the kind of easily maintained landscape that is such a joy to the true, if only part-time, horticulturist.

The simplicity of the house is admirably suited to the Sheffs' highly individual manner of living. "It imposes no pattern of its own," Mrs. Sheff explains. In decorating it, she felt free to indulge her flair for color, and Mr. Sheff was inspired to tackle a number of do-it-yourself projects, including the paving of the terraces and much of the planting. As a result, they look upon the house, not as static shelter, but as an active, wholly cooperative partner in their lives.

You enter the Rasbach house by way of a raftered patio that expresses, in every detail, not only the spirit of the house, but also its practicality. The sturdy paving of inexpensive Mexican terra-cotta tile needs little maintenance, so the Rasbachs extended it throughout the ground floor where it offers no hindrance to the comings and goings of children and pets. Thick stucco-coated walls, proverbial for their coolness, are also repeated indoors since their roughened surfaces bear up well under scuffs or dirt or even gouges. The airy balcony (also the corresponding one at the back of the house) and the floor-length windows in the upstairs rooms where the Rasbach boys sleep, seem to extend these rooms outdoors. (Although there is a house-wide air-conditioning system, the Rasbachs like natural ventilation whenever possible.) Expanses of glass, framed in wood with dark stain, are shielded from the hot southwest sun by heavy shutters but during cooler hours the sliding glass walls afford contemporary freedom.

The house rests on a high narrow shelf of land near Beverly Hills, Calif., looking across plunging, tree-clad hills to a panoramic view of the valley below. In a certain light, the vista of trees layered with mist suggests a Japanese landscape, a marvelously apt setting for the contemporary architecture with its Japanese detail.

The long narrow plan of the house, its shape determined by the shape of the land, gives every room a spectacular view plus a more immediate outlook on the sparkling pool and its terrace. The same shape made it easy to separate the girls' bedrooms from their parents' by the great living-dining-cooking area. Outside this part of the house the pool stretches toward the back of the site like a lawn of glittering sapphire, and the long porch of rosy beige pebbled concrete extends the indoor living areas to meet it. The low platform or hikie at one end is in fact a continuation of the living room's raised hearth.The bedroom wings have their own outdoor extensions: enclosed sun courts with direct access in each case to a bath dressing room. These prophesy the second life of the house. For when the girls are away, their wing is like a guest house within the big house, offering all the amenities of polished hospitality: self containment, lavish dressing space, the luxury of the pool a few steps outside the door. Even when there are no guests the wing is in continual use, for a third room has been turned into a painting and pottery studio, left, where the girls' mother spends a good deal of time when she is alone.

Nothing more truly expresses the real flavor of the house than the great living area, opposite page. Pervaded by the outdoors, this huge room with its terrace is informal enough to suit the girls and their friends, yet it has enough dignity for their parents' large parties. At the fireplace end, only a low book case separates the room from the hall lined with shoji-doored closets. These conspire with the travertine chimney breast and the end wall of vertical red-wood boards to create an atmosphere of unpretentious elegance. At the other end of the room, the dining area is screened from the hall by a ceiling-high storage wall that includes a bar.Buffet parties are the rule in this house, and the 12-foot-long Philippine mahogany cabinet between the dining area and the kitchen makes a wonderful place to set out the food. Above the cabinet are folding doors that close off the kitchen, below left. 

But when these are open, cooking becomes a part of the party, and the guests can watch and sniff dinner as it is barbecued at the tile-topped cooking island. At one end of the kitchen is a high counter facing the sliding doors to the terrace so dripping bathers can hop over from the pool to help themselves to sustenance.The Japanese accent of the architecture is echoed by tiny gardens near the front door and outside the master bedroom. These little plots have the added charm of easy maintenance, another point that predicts a happy future for this house in its second life.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | November 1961

Every house reflects the values of the family who live in it—but none more clearly than a house built for a young family on a young, i.e., limited, budget. Since they can't have everything, everything they put their money into is the result of a considered choice, and the sum of these choices both mirrors and molds their style of living. A shining example is the George Davises' house in Tacoma, Washington. In many ways, the Davises are typical of hundreds of today's young families: Mr. Davis commutes to his business downtown; Mrs. Davis works, too, but part-time and at home; they have two little girls—Kit, 4 1/2 and Gail, 2. Untypical, however, is the fact that Mrs. Davis, who is an architect, designed their house and was thereby able to incorporate her requirements as wife and mother directly into the blueprints with no need to confer with anyone but herself. 

The Davises' building budget was $25,000 (which did not cover cost of land and landscaping nor, naturally, include an architect's fee). This money they turned into space (3,238 square feet of it) plus privacy (none of the main rooms face the street) and plenty of places to put things (thirteen storage walls) in preference to a showy array of built-in gadgets and fancy finishes. By using simple materials and the simplest type of construction (post and beam) and capitalizing on the economies of a two-story plan, Mrs. Davis produced a four-bedroom house with space bonuses you rarely expect to achieve on a limited budget: a playroom, a home office and two full dressing rooms. The main floor is divided into three zones: the general living area (A on plan) that embraces dining area and kitchen; the office (B) which is near enough to the living area to double as extra party space; and the bedroom zone (C). The lower floor, which includes the playroom, two bedrooms and a bath will become a separate private domain for Kit and Gail when they are older. But the real key to the house is storage, for it is the storage walls that divide the space in what is otherwise a long, open shell. "Storage" says Mrs. Davis, "is the basic element of design. Its relationship to the family pattern of living determines the plan." 

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source: House and Garden Magazine | May 1961

Today's down-to-earth young families, when they set out to buy a house, may prefer to shop for one that is already built, and with good reason. They will have the whole real estate market to choose from, and they will be able to see what they're getting without having to try to visualize a finished house from bewildering blueprints. Once they move in, the house will serve as a good proving ground for ideas of their own which they may someday ask an architect to incorporate in a house designed just for them. Many of the new ready-built houses are the joint product of a national house manufacturer and a local builder-dealer-so they offer an added, twofold advantage. 

Buyers not only reap the savings brought about by the manufacturer's large-scale buying of materials and equipment, but they can also exercise personal choice in the design and the details, since so much of the finishing is done by the local builder. 

An example of this new kind of ready-built is the French Provincial house, by Scholz Homes, Inc. It offers the look of substance and the traditional detailing of a custom-built house while its plan is well worked out for up-to-date living. The house has two full living areas (one, a paneled family room) which share a dramatic fireplace. There are three bedrooms, a full kitchen and two bathrooms. And the master bedroom suite boasts a storage-lined dressing room such as you would expect to find only in a custom-built house. The manufacturer provides the basic structure of the house-all of the framework, the interior walls, the roof shingles, all the doors and windows (including garage door and sliding windows) and the hardware. Important bonuses such as paneling for the family room, six prefabricated storage walls, all the kitchen cabinets, even a handsome new range are included in the manufacturer's package. The local builder supplies the rest: foundation, brickwork for outside walls and chimney, plumbing, heating, wiring and bathroom, kitchen and laundry fixtures. 

Meandering woodland terraces bordered by bosky planting and linked by rustic steps encircle H&G's Hallmark house for 1961. Yet this house is just 40 feet above a busy main street that leads to downtown Baltimore, 15 minutes away. Nearness to the city was a major consideration in selecting the site. But, as in so many parts of the country today, the only land left close to town was as unpromising as the steep woodsy slope on which this house was built. Yet the architect and landscape architect, who worked in close collaboration from the start, achieved an integrated design in which house and site merge so closely as to be almost inseparable.

This interplay with nature gives the house a special enchantment, at once tranquil and exhilarating, which is one of the qualities that inspired its citation as a Hallmark house. Another was the discriminating selection of materials with which it is built. Most important of all, however, in H&G's judgment, are the comforts and the pleasure, the spaciousness and the privacy which the house affords to the young and growing family who live in it. The one-story plan is so skillfully zoned for the varying activities of the young parents and their four children—two toddlers, two girls in grade school—that it works like four houses under one roof.

The atrium, the delightful surprise at the heart of the house, brings to completion its merger with nature. Open to the sky, the inner court offers a bonus of daylight as well as an intimate view of growing trees and shrubs to balance the light and views through glass walls and windows on the outside of the house. Privacy is assured by the design of the encircling land which appears to be as natural as an untamed forest but is, in fact, the result of carving the site into a series of terraces. Thus the family has all the conveniences of one-level living enriched by the visual charm of a multi-level setting.

The informal woodsy quality of the setting inspired the choice of redwood board and batten for the exterior. Indoors, the exposed post and beam construction and materials such as the fir of the ceilings, the rugged stone of the fireplace and the black ceramic tile that paves every floor also emphasize the close affiliation with nature. Quiet and unobtrusive, they are a perfect foil for the colorful, changing scene outdoors which is such a delight from spring to fall. And they create a warm background for living which never palls with time.

One of the freedoms that comes with the independent years is the freedom to risk adventure—to live in an entirely new and different way. For the Robert C. Reeds of Lake Forest, Ill., their new house is such an adventure. "Compact but convertible," they call it, and they revel in its varied and flexible living space which opens wide for parties, yet also affords a sense of snug containment when the Reeds are alone. Although 2,640 square feet in area, the house is just half as large as their former home. Yet the plan is compact and makes ample provision for privacy. The master bedroom, furnished like a sitting room, is a pleasant setting for reading or quiet work. Adjoining the bedroom but completely separate, is a storage-lined double dressing room—one of today's luxuries that mean so much in terms of comfort. For the Reeds, the outdoor living area around the pool and outside the lanai is another new delight. Nevertheless the grounds are so planned that there is no maintenance to worry about. Beyond the low fence which surrounds the house are flowering meadows that provide the pleasure of natural gardens.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | March 1963

This house turns its carport and a blank wall to the street, and inside the house you will find a family room, a choice of dining areas, generous built-in kitchen equipment and specialized storage. Improved forms of lighting and recently developed materials such as translucent plastic panels are also demonstrated here. But above all, this builder's house shows what up-to-date planning can do to make a small house seem large, almost double in size, in fact, by the addition of carefully organized outdoor areas that make the most of every inch of a small lot. Despite its location in a crowded suburban area, every major room in the house has a window wall and complete privacy as well. In achieving this feat, canny planning was abetted by a simple device as old as civilization which is being handled today in a new manner-the tall fence.

Just north of San Francisco is tiny Corinthian Island terraced with houses overlooking a boat-dotted cove, like a vignette of the Italian Riviera on San Francisco Bay. To Mr. and Mrs. Peter Mantegani, who had lived here for years, the views of cove and bay had never ceased to be a delight; but the Manteganis' house—old, complicated, and cluttered with stairs—had become a burden. They wanted a modern house: one that would be small, yet have room enough for the large parties they love to give—and one with a minimum of stairs. A site was at hand—the adjoining property, in fact. But it was a narrow strip of hill that tumbled waterward at a precipitous 60° angle—steep even by Bay Area standards. To many homebuilders, such a lot might have seemed impossibly difficult. The Manteganis' architect, Joseph Esherick, solved the site problems, however, with one bold stroke. He cantilevered the house out from the hill on massive concrete T-beams and the resulting effect, which the double tier of decks so handsomely underscores, is that of the prow of a ship thrusting outward from the land. The glass walls, running the full width of the house on both levels, open it to bay, sky and sun and, together with the broad decks, contribute importantly to the sense of spaciousness indoors. You enter the house on the upper floor, but stairs indoors and out (only one set of each) lead down immediately to the heart of the house. Here the openness of the living room, which occupies fully half of the lower level, makes you forget you are in a really small house.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1960