FEATURE: Makeover For A Morgan

New life for S.F. house Julia Morgan designed
James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer

Article SF Chronicle

A San Francisco couple has spent nearly six years tediously renovating an early work of famed Bay Area architect Julia Morgan, preserving as much of the original design as possible within the restraints of modern codes - and allowing for a few modern desires.

The brown-shingle Arts & Crafts home, adorned with a gambrel roof and angled bay, climbs three stories above one of the steepest blocks of Filbert Street. William Hellendale and Suzanne Dumont restored the downstairs kitchen according to the original designs and tracked down replacement tiles, shingles, bricks and fixtures that closely matched the bona fide materials throughout the structure. In a nod to contemporary tastes and wants, however, they converted the brick foundation into a four-car garage and added a handful of top-floor dormers to provide headroom and light.

Now that the overhaul of the Russian Hill residence is complete, the couple feel it's time to move on. They plan to place the building, which includes three bedrooms in the owner's unit and two bedrooms in a flat, on the market later this month for nearly $3.7 million.

Morgan, born in San Francisco in 1872, was one of the nation's first independent female architects and one of the most prolific architects period, according to "Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty," by Mark Wilson.

Best known for designing Hearst Castle in San Simeon, she has a body of work that includes more than 700 completed structures, including schools, YWCAs, hospitals, homes and even a zoo. New buildings are still being discovered, according to her goddaughter, historical researcher Lynn Forney McMurray.

Morgan was an influential figure in the First Bay Tradition, the local Arts & Crafts style that emphasized the use of natural materials and designs sensitive to the building site, Wilson said in an interview.

"She would be considered one of the two leading lights of that movement, along with (Bernard) Maybeck," her mentor and designer of the Palace of Fine Arts, he said. "She should be ranked at the highest levels of American architecture, period."

For some, however, Morgan's work itself isn't as notable as her role as a trailblazer for female architects.

"You will talk to a lot of people who would say she was a strikingly original, significantly inspired designer," said Sally Woodbridge, the author or co-author of more than a dozen books on West Coast architecture. "I don't think she was that.

"She was remarkable because, as a woman, she had this very prosperous practice" when females were not commonly principals in the profession, Woodbridge said.

Morgan opened her first office on Montgomery Street in San Francisco in 1904. Construction began on the Filbert Street home four years later.

Morgan, then 36, designed the building for Isabelle J.C. Woodland and Jessie H. Carruthers or Esther Woodland and J.H. Caruthers, depending on which records you believe. It appears they were sisters-in-law and schoolteachers. The home cost $7,212 to build and was completed in April 1909.

The home features many of what would become the Morgan trademarks described in "Julia Morgan, Architect" by Sara Holmes Boutelle: Side entrances that give the front rooms a private feel; exposed and unadorned wood trim throughout; subtle, handcrafted details like the rosettes above the mantels; building materials taken from the local environment, including Douglas fir and coast redwood; a connection between indoor and outdoor space through the use of large bay windows, a rear garden, skylights and the balcony.

Side windows on the second and third floors offer a dead-on view of Coit Tower and panorama of the city's east side, the bay and the Berkeley Hills beyond.

Among Morgan's multiple-unit homes, "it's one of the best," Wilson said. "Because she's making effective use of a difficult site and because it is a superb essay in the First Bay Tradition mode, of which she was a master."

Hellendale and Dumont bought the house in December 2002 for about $1.6 million, from the estate of a woman who had owned it for around four decades. At the time, there were tenants living in both units. The young men upstairs were known in the neighborhood less for their appreciation of early 20th century architecture than for throwing raucous parties that spilled onto the balcony.

The house, if it needs saying, was not in good shape. But the Realtor flyer had noted in small type that a book suggested the home was designed by Julia Morgan, which is what caught the couple's attention.

"Just to walk through it was a thrill," said Dumont, a native Californian who grew up knowing Morgan's name. "To be able to get it, that was major cause for celebration."

Soon after purchasing the home, she tracked down Forney McMurray. Her mother worked as Morgan's secretary and preserved hundreds of original designs. She helped them locate several of the drawings for the house, which she had donated to the UC Berkeley School of Environmental Design archives. The documents confirmed that Morgan designed the building and guided the subsequent renovation

"We feel like we had this insight into her psyche," Dumont said.

Notably, the drawings revealed that the downstairs kitchen - with its wooden plate racks, glass cabinets and tile counter - was Morgan's own design. Several Realtors advised them to rip it out, but they couldn't do so in good conscience, knowing that it was likely one of the few surviving Morgan kitchens. Instead, they restored it, and installed a second sink and modern appliances on the east side of the room.

About the house
Address: 1124-1126 Filbert St., San Francisco
List price: $3,695,000
Square feet: 3,400
Built: 1908-09

Features: Three-story, brown-shingle home, four-car garage, private garden, two units, five bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, four skylights, two balconies, original Julia Morgan kitchen.

Open house: Sunday, Sept. 7, 2-4 p.m.

Agent: Nina Hatvany, TRI Coldwell Banker.

To learn more about Julia Morgan: At noon Sept. 15, author Mark Wilson will lecture on give a lecture, "Julia Morgan's Unique Place in American Architecture," at the Newman Auditorium at Santa Rosa Junior College (1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa). It's free for the public and will last about one hour.

E-mail James Temple at jtemple@sfchronicle.com .

This article appeared on page K - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle