Discovering an 'Unknown' Cliff May Home in San Diego

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

1. Discovering a Cliff May Home

We have an old hacienda-style house with open-beam ceilings, that surrounds a completely enclosed courtyard. For years, people, including many architects, have told us we have a Cliff May house.

I saw a sketch of a 1932 Cliff May spec house in a book & noticed that it looked a lot like our house. I then flipped the image horizontally & saw that it is substantially identical to our house.

1932 Cliff May spec house & mirror image
original sketch:		mirrored sketch:
image from CAREFREE CALIFORNIA: CLIFF MAY AND THE ROMANCE OF THE RANCH HOUSE

Comparing the mirrored 1932 sketch with our house, the similarities jump out more than the differences. (The home originally had a shake roof, but was recently replaced with composition shingle)


below pic shows the original brick driveway (since replaced with stamped concrete)

For some perspective on the time that our house was built, see it in this 1936 aerial photo. (the barn formerly in the back is gone - only the original poured foundation remains)

And then a photo from the 1950s:

The original Building Inspection, dated 9/20/1935, was found nailed onto the garage wall behind the water heater:

Monday, March 18, 2013

2. Comparing our house to known Cliff May designs

Features in actual Cliff May homes or in Cliff May designs/sketches are shown with corresponding features in our home.

Sketched entry door & Living Room fireplace, compared to ours:

image from CAREFREE CALIFORNIA: CLIFF MAY AND THE ROMANCE OF THE RANCH HOUSE

Unusual entry doors & deep, tapered entryways are seen on early Cliff May hacienda-style homes:

Note the colorful tiled-in home address number (another Cliff May characteristic):

Cliff May liked beehive fireplaces (ours is on the right):

Wall-art comparison:
a painting in Cliff May's own home at left, a sculpture built-in to our LR wall on the right:

image on left from The Regents of The University of California, UC Libraries, powered by the California Digital Library.

Interior door comparison:

image on left from Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May

Our doorbell is operated by pull-string:

A comparison of lighting fixtures:

image on left from Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May

The original gutters in our courtyard were wooden "Vee" like the pic below:

image from Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May

Sunday, March 17, 2013

3. Olive Tree in the Courtyard

When we bought the house there was a giant olive tree in the courtyard, as is common in early Cliff May homes. The canopy was larger in diameter than the entire courtyard, keeping it entirely in shade. We had to duck to walk under it, it dropped messy olives, and the roots buckled the courtyard brick-and-concrete paving.

After a few years of putting up with the mess and the non-draining and uneven courtyard surface, we finally removed the tree.

Then I cleaned out some roots...,

... re-paved a level area, trimmed up the stump, & added a boat-BBQ to the stump.

4. Floor Plan

Referring back to the sketch of a 1932 Cliff May spec house, here is the floor plan:

The mirror-image of the floor plan is below:

Here is the floor plan of our house:

5. Backyard Brick Path and Clothesline

Cliff May often designed or suggested the landscaping for his house designs, often including brick pathways & identified areas for clotheslines.

Our back yard has a small lawn, lots of fruit and ornamental trees, and a winding brick pathway throughout the landscaping - including a dedicated area for the clothesline (since removed).

Friday, March 15, 2013

6. Pine Tree

There was a 40-ft high x 40' wide Torrey Pine tree in the front yard. We, along with the entire neighborhood, loved it, but it had to go.

The roots were so invasive that they not only buckled & broke the original red-brick driveway, but they reached all the way through the courtyard, buckling the breezeway bricks & causing leaks in the copper water lines.

The last straw was when the roots caused a leak in the water supply line from the meter to the house. To access the line to repair it, I had to dig a huge trough & cut through endless crisscrossing roots, some of them over 6" in diameter. The valve on the water meter didn't shut off completely, making it extra-tough to solder the repair joint.

After completing that repair, I decided not to wait for another leak & had the tree removed.

7. Driveway & Mechanic's Pit

There was a mechanic's pit in the Garage. It was a concrete-lined hole in the floor that you could climb down into & park your car over it so you could work standing up. When not in use, it was covered by a series of heavy wooden planks that rested on a recessed concrete shelf around the rim of the pit.

The pit had cracked sides and bottom surfaces & water leaked in during the rainy season. It was really too shallow to be useful & rather than rebuild it, while replacing the driveway we went ahead & had this filled in also.

The City of San Diego would not allow us to rebuild the driveway out of real red brick in the public right-of-way, which covered all of the apron & over 4 feet of driveway up from the sidewalk. So we did the next best thing, using stamped concrete to approximat e the original look as much as possible.