Historic Homes and Inns of Carmel-by-the-Sea
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About this ebook
Alissandra Dramov
Alissandra Dramov is a journalist, author, and historian. She is a former television broadcast news reporter, anchor, producer, and videographer. Alissandra supports historic preservation and is the author of three history books about Carmel-by-the-Sea.
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Historic Homes and Inns of Carmel-by-the-Sea - Alissandra Dramov
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INTRODUCTION
Carmel-by-the-Sea’s historic homes and inns have mirrored architectural trends in the country but with unique qualities based on the individuality of the town’s residents and builders. When Carmel City was founded in the late 19th century, the houses were typically vernacular cottages, mostly constructed by carpenters such as Delos Goldsmith, the town’s first builder. Some had Victorian era style influences. In Carmel-by-the-Sea’s first two decades, from early 1900 to 1920, it was a haven for Bohemian artists and writers, along with professors, mostly from the San Francisco Bay Area. They were content with simple Craftsman-style bungalows or beach cottages, often board-and-batten structures, some of which they constructed themselves.
Shortly after it was founded, a young man from Mendon, Utah, whose experience was as a house painter, moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1904 and soon became the town’s official builder. Thus, Michael (M.J.
) Murphy Jr. (1885–1959) began four decades as Carmel’s most prolific contractor, until his retirement in 1941. By the 1930s, it was estimated that he built four out of five houses in town. No one else constructed more homes and buildings in Carmel’s history, a total of 350. When he started his career, Murphy frequently constructed Craftsman-style cottages using local, natural building materials. As the country entered the Roaring Twenties and its economic boom, Murphy’s designs evolved with the times and with his clients’ wants. He built larger and more sophisticated residences, often in the European Revival styles (English, French, and Spanish) popular in that period. No matter the style, M.J. Murphy was always known for his quality craftsmanship.
Carmel attracted new residents along with wealthy summer visitors who constructed second or vacation houses during this era. These homes were often done on a grander scale not seen before in the town. In fact, some of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s inns had once been large residences, while others were groups of guest cottages. Many homeowners, as well as designers and builders, had been to Europe—whether by heritage or through travel, education, or service in World War I—and were familiar with European architecture. Notable architects were commissioned primarily from the San Francisco Bay Area to build these individual custom homes and inns. They included Albert Farr, Henry Gutterson, and George McCrea, along with the firms Blaine and Olson and Swartz & Ryland. After he was hired to design a massive stone residence on the Carmel Highlands coastline, Southern California architect Charles Greene relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea.
In the mid-1920s, a rancher from Santa Rosa who first came to Carmel to visit his artist sister and her husband forever left an imprint that defined the quaint architectural character of the village. Hugh W. Comstock (1893–1950) was born in Evanston, Illinois, and moved to California with his family in 1907. During that trip to Carmel in 1924, he met and shortly thereafter married local doll designer Mayotta Browne. At a cost of $100, combined with admiration for British children’s book illustrator Arthur Rackham, but no construction training—just his imagination—Comstock built a 244-square-foot studio (Hansel) as a showcase for his wife’s doll collection. The whimsical little cottage in the woods triggered the fairy tale building trend that established the familiar, charming appearance of the village. Carmel-by-the-Sea’s architecture thereafter became identified with the Tudor Storybook style.
Other main local builders of the 1920s and 1930s in Carmel were Lee Gottfried, Ernest Bixler, Percy Parkes, Frederick Bigland, Guy Koepp, George Whitcomb, and Miles Bain. From that time onwards, creative and independent women such as Ann Nash and Dorothy Bassett, Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous, and Laura Maxwell—often without any building experience—also crafted houses. The Great Depression years of the 1930s led to the construction of more modest and simpler houses, with less adorned architecture. Noted Bay Area architect Julia Morgan designed a house in the Minimal Traditional style, which overlooked the Carmel Mission. Local architect Robert Stanton was one among several who devised a house with prefabricated building materials to cut costs.
In 1941, an artist-by-training designed Carmel’s first Modernist subdivision, Sand and Sea.