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Today we feature an interesting home designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1907. The house was built for Frances Gregory whose brother Warren was a well-respected lawyer and professor at Berkeley. Warren and his wife Sadie owned a house down the street which was designed by John Galen Howard, and Sadie would also later commission William Wurster to design the famous Gregory Farmhouse in the Santa Cruz mountains.
The Frances Gregory house shares a certain simplicity with the Gregory Farmhouse and its Third Bay successors that would come so many years later. It is a basic saltbox form that is remarkably devoid of ornamentation (especially considering some of the other work that Maybeck was producing at the time). Its lack of overhanging eaves and orderly arrangements of windows make it appear very modern when contrasted with the Noyes house next door at 1486 (also by John Galen Howard) which looks much more in keeping with Maybeck’s other work of the period. There is also a good deal less interior woodwork than is often seen in Maybeck homes. Though the redwood paneling in the public rooms covers much of the wall, the ceilings are bare plaster.
