Remembering Will Adams, One Step at a Time

A large turnout of 59 walkers and five K-9 best friends was at the Exedra last Wednesday for our Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesdays walk. There was a good reason for the big turnout. The walk was in the memory of Will Adams, who died unexpectedly in December. There will also be a Celebration of Life service for Will at Piedmont Community Church this Saturday, March 8th, at 1:00 PM. Everyone is welcome. We were happy that Will’s wife Linda, daughter Alissa, and granddaughter Chelsea were with us too.

Will Adams was an architect, urban designer, and 30-year Piedmonter, who wrote the Piedmont Post’s Walking Piedmont column. He was also a Wednesday walker and led many walks for the group devoted to the different styles of architecture found in Piedmont. Last Wednesday, fellow architect Jim Kellogg was going to lead a tour of Julia Morgan designed homes, like the first walk Will led for us in 2021.

Jim began the tour with a remembrance of Will’s 2021 walk with information about Julia Morgan and the homes she designed that remain a core part of Piedmont’s architectural heritage. Morgan’s family moved to the Bay Area from New York when she was two years old, and she spent the rest of her life here. She graduated from Oakland High School in 1890 and completed a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1894. It did not have a School of Architecture then, so Morgan applied and became the first woman admitted to the architecture program at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and then became the first woman architect licensed in California.

Morgan formed her own firm in 1904, after studying with Bernard Maybeck and working for two years in Berkeley with John Galen Howard. She was a constant worker completely dedicated to her profession and never married. She was also an excellent manager and developed a special rapport with craftsmen and artisans working on her projects and managed a hundred people at the peak of her Hearst Castle project. She designed over 700 other California projects including the Berkeley Greek Theater, the Berkeley City Club, the Mills College Campanile, the Carnegie Library, the Monterey Asilomar Conference Center, Piedmont Avenue’s Chapel of the Chimes, Piedmont’s Ransom Bridges School on Hazel Lane, and many others. She was known for delivering projects on time and on budget.

Morgan embraced the Arts and Crafts Movement supported by Bernard Maybeck in her architectural work. She strove to reconcile her exposure and training in other styles including Beaux-Arts formalism, Classical, and Neo-Tudor, while at the same time adding artistry and whimsy to her designs.  She was also an excellent engineer pioneering the aesthetic use of reinforced structural concrete as well as inventive custom cement mixes for decorative sculpture and detailing.

Morgan designed about 10 beautiful homes that remain in Piedmont. They were all designed within a period of 15 years after Piedmont’s founding in 1907. That is a time in the early 1920s when the city was referred to as “Queen of The Hills” and the “The City of Millionaires.” Her design style and masterpiece projects added to the accuracy of these monikers, as well as the character of Piedmont that we still enjoy today. Jim’s tour would also touch on work by Morgan’s fellow architects of this period. They significantly influenced each other and enabled Morgan to evolve her style and the quality of her designs. 

After providing this background, Jim led the long parade of walkers to see eight of Morgan’s projects. We went up Sierra Avenue for the first two. Several Sierra homes represent the varying architectural styles in the early era of Piedmont’s development and influenced Morgan’s work. They included an arts and crafts home by John Hudson Thomas at 12 Sierra, an elegant beaux-arts classical revival across the street, and a neo-tutor manor house with steep double gable roofs.

The first Morgan home was a simple yet beautiful steep-roofed neo-tutor at 49 Sierra built in 1914. It provided an interesting contrast to her house next door at 45 Sierra that was designed in 1925. It represents her mature craftsman’s style with handcrafted detailing and fenestration filled with light and framed views. Morgan’s site plan included an elegant, shared porte-cochere driveway and rear yard garage to unify the two homes.

We continued up Lakeview Avenue to Sea View Avenue, passing several beautiful manor houses that represent the diversity of style and quality design of homes that filled Piedmont’s estate district during the first 15 years of its growth. We stopped at 25 Sea View, an elegantly proportioned classical revival with a Parisian cantilevered glass entry overhang built in 1915. This is not a Morgan house but is an excellent example of Beaux-Arts style that was ingrained in her early education. She had to reconcile this with the arts and crafts movement that she was convinced was the future of her California work.

We continued down Sea View to Hampton Avenue and one of Julia’s masterpieces at 216 Hampton that was built in 1912. The owner had permitted Jim to bring us into the yard and go around the house to study the elegant arts and crafts detailing. The house has had only two owners and they have retained its original layout and character for over 100 years. The beautiful, mature landscaping surrounding the property made us feel we had left modern Piedmont and entered a 1920s “quiet secret garden.” We took a group photo there.

We returned to Sea View and made our way to another Morgan masterpiece at 246 Sea View that the group agreed was the tour’s most beautiful Morgan design. Jim described it as a neo-tutor craftsman blend. It features a red-brick lower floor, stucco with wood trim, terracotta tile upper floor, and a double peak gable roof with wood carving decorations that accentuate the home’s beauty.

We then turned onto Farragut Avenue to see the tour’s final three Morgan homes. The first large home on the hill’s top is a classic neo-tutor. It was designed for James Lombard. He was educated at Harrow Public School in England and wanted his home to provide a remembrance of Harrow. For many years this house was referred to as “Harrow Manor.” Jim told us a recent addition was made to the home’s east side. Modifications to this National landmark home required a complicated approval process by three groups: Piedmont City Planning, the Piedmont Historical Society, and the Federal Government. We went around the side of the home, down King Avenue to an impressive, but much smaller carriage house designed by Morgan that is now a separate home.

We completed our tour by returning to Farragut and going down to Crocker Avenue. We admired the classic Mediterranean home at 200 Crocker that Morgan designed in 1926. Around the corner at 206 Crocker is a large, modern carriage house, built in 2018. Its proportioning and detailing replicate the Morgan original and together they form a beautiful paring. This completed the tour and, before returning to the Exedra, we gave Jim an appreciative round of applause for the informative and enjoyable morning with an understanding of how Will Adams made it possible.