The Weston Havens House is a masterwork of Harwell Hamilton Harris, an architect who contributed importantly to re-directing the design of Modern architecture in California from the European International Style, as embodied in the Southern California works of Richard Neutra and R.M. Schindler, to a regional expression of Modernism, drawing on works by Bernard Maybeck and William W. Wurster.

Photo: Man Ray

Harwell Hamilton Harris was born on July 2, 1903, in Redlands, California. Harwell moved to Los Angeles In 1923, where a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House inspired him to study architecture. After working in the offices of R.M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, Harris left to start his own practice in 1933. His first commissions were for small homes in which he applied modernist principles—notably modular systems. In 1939, Harris met Weston Havens, the last member of a prominent Berkeley, California, family and a devotee of Modern design, who was searching for an architect to design a contemporary house for his property in the Berkeley hills.

Photo: Man Ray

The Weston Havens House is a two-story California Modernist-style dwelling. The innovative use of structure and a rigorous application of modular design for the whole property, which includes a secondary building and a landscaped court, make this property an exemplar of the tenets of the Modern Movement. The house consists of two volumes, separated by a sunken court and linked by a bridge. At the time of its construction, two radical innovations distinguished the Havens House—detachment from the hillside, and its inverted gables. The eastern volume, consisting of entry, carport, and maid’s quarters, is anchored to the slope and connects to the street. The western volume comprises three inverted triangular trusses (or gables), stacked vertically, which support the house’s flat roof, main floor, and lower floor. Exterior and interior material use strongly reflects the California Modernist sensibility. Both buildings are framed with Douglas fir; the exterior cladding is redwood boards. The bridge, retaining walls, landscaped patio, windows, and doors are of redwood as well, and redwood is the principal material for interior walls and ceilings and built-in elements such as bookcases and cabinets.

Image courtesy of Environmental Design Archives.

Perched atop a dramatic, inclined promontory, the house’s main rooms front west, affording spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.