Glenn Robert Lym Architect AIA/PhD

Architect Bernard Maybeck built five San Francisco houses in San Francisco in a 7 year period between 1909 to 1916.

He crafted a different image of home for each of these projects.  Each are among the first homes built in their neighborhoods.  When seen up close, each has its own style, detailing, and overall form.  None seek to simply harmonize with their neighbors.

Maybeck crafted these homes with an understanding of how they sat on the land.  Though they do not attempt to blend in with their neighbors, they also do not detract from them either.  In overall massing, when seen from afar, the Maybeck homes do not make aggressive large, simplistic statements that would make them seem out of place with the homes built later around them.

The Maybeck homes are reminders of an earlier, less self conscious era, when bohemian clients and their architect both valued individual expression and attention to the particulars of a family and a site yet combined that with a civil, public understood that others would build next store.

Today, many San Francisco's neighborhoods are stylistically self conscious.  Many neighborhoods seek conformance to overall neighborhood characteristics which are deemed more valuable to the neighborhood than individual home self expression and fulfillment.  These Maybeck homes would probably never get built if they had to proceed through the city's current planning review process in most parts of the city.  Today, this is a process that requires that each new homes and additions blend in detail and in exterior form with what is around it. 

HERE3 is 23 minutes long and was written, filmed and edited by Glenn Lym
in the Fall of 2008 through Fall of 2009.  You can download a full version of HERE3 directly within iTunes and subscribe to future episodes of HERE for free by clicking on the iTunes button below.

You can also view HERE3 on YouTube.  Due to its length and YouTube's file size and duration restrictions, HERE3 on YouTube consists of 3 separate, lower quality videos. Click on the video below to see and connect to the YouTube version.

C r e d i t s

Thanks to Joe Armin, Joseph Charles, Michael Grubb, David Lukoff, Mindy Lym, Tim Miller, Chris Shelton, J. D. Wade and Ron Wellman who provided valuable feedback on earlier versions of this video podcast.


R e f e r e n c e s - B o o k s

Gray Brechin  Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruins
University of California Press 1999

Kenneth H. Cardwell Bernard Maybeck: Artisan, Architect, Artist
Peregrine Smith Inc  1977

Leslie Mandelson Freudeheim & Elisabeth Sacks Sussman
Building with Nature: Roots of the San Francisco Bay Region Tradition
Peregrine Smith Inc  1974

Richard Longstretch
On the Edge of the World: four architects in San Francisco at the turn of the Century
Architectural History Foundation & The MIT Press 1983

Jacomena Maybeck  Maybeck: the family view  Berkeley
Architectural Heritage Association  1991

Jacomena Maybeck People and Places: A Memoir
Stonegarden Press, Berkeley 1992

Joel Pomerantz "Water Walkng Tour" www.thinkwalks.org, May 2010

Sally Woodbridge and Richard Barnes  Bernard Maybeck: visionary architect
Abbeville Press 1992


F l y o v e r V i d e o

http://earth.google.com  and  SnapzProX video capture software by Ambrosia Software   http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/


S t i l l P h o t o g r a p h y

"Maybeck Sitting by the Fire Place in the Wallen Maybeck House No 1"
by Cedric Wright 1926

"Maybeck In Front of the Studio / Sack House, Berkeley" by Lionel Berryhill, 1924

"Annie, Ben, Wallen and Kerna in Costumes Designed by Maybeck for a Family Pageant" Unknown Photographer, circa 1910

"View of the Living Room Towards the Bay Window, Erlanger House"
by Richard Barnes in Sally Woodbridge and Richard Barnes
Bernard Maybeck: visionary architect  Abbeville Press 1992

"View of the Northern End of the Living Room, with the 12 Foot High Bay, Erlanger House" by Richard Barnes in Sally Woodbridge and Richard Barnes  Bernard Maybeck: visionary architect  Abbeville Press 1992

"Dining Room, Roos House" by Richard Barnes in Sally Woodbridge and Richard Barnes  Bernard Maybeck: visionary architect  Abbeville Press 1992

"Living Room Hall, Roos House" by Rob Super 1975

"Living Room, Roos House" by Richard Barnes in Sally Woodbridge and Richard Barnes  Bernard Maybeck: visionary architect  Abbeville Press 1992


M u s i c

Titles and Flyovers
by Glenn Lym

Castenada House
Johann Sebastian Bach "Contrapunctus 2" performed by the Juillard String Quartet on "Die Kunst Der Fuge" released by Sony Classical

Jackson House
Maurice Ravel "Gaspard de la Nuit: Ondine, Lent" performed by Luis Lortie on "Ravel: Complete Works for Piano" released by Chandos Classics