CLIFF MAY'S 'HACIENDA MODERN'
Hardly a mainstream modernist, Cliff May made
rustic-looking homes as modern as they come
From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein
A few years after Cliff May started winning his reputation by designing ranch houses, he came upon the book 'House of Tomorrow: America's First Glass House.' He was not impressed.
The book included "the most sad-looking group of houses you ever saw," May told oral historian Marlene Laskey in 1982. Laskey's oral history, 'The California Ranch House,' was prepared for the Oral History Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. "There can't be a house of tomorrow," May announced, "because tomorrow never comes."
May, clearly, was no mainstream modernist. He never heard of the International Style until after World War II -- and found it unappealing then. (He was friends, however, with Frank Lloyd Wright.)
But just as clearly, he became one of California's masters of modernism, and not just because his postwar houses are wide-open spaces held up by posts and beams and sided with walls of glass. From his first house to his last, May was a quintessential modernist because of his concern for how a house works. While he may not have been part of the modern movement, May shared its major goal -- using architecture to improve mankind.
A sixth-generation California rooted in all things Spanish Colonial, May won early success in San Diego building hacienda-styled ranches with handmade terra cotta tiled roofs, faux adobe walls, and wrought iron tracery. Soon he was also building the 'ranchera,' similarly arrayed but without the Spanish influence, "so that people who didn't like the Mexican or the Spanish flavor, they had the pure ranch house," he said.
A dapper man, soft-spoken but with rapid-fire delivery, May ran a small office. He was self-taught, and worked as a building designer, not an architect. May did more than anyone to turn the ranch house into America's preeminent postwar housing type. He designed more than 1,000 custom homes -- mostly in California -- throughout the United States, and in Europe, Australia, and the Philippines. May built small subdivisions of ranch houses. And at least 18,000 tract homes were built to designs by May and associate Chris Choate.
May never defined the ranch house through its look. He defined it instead through its function. "It's an informal way of living out of doors," he said. A May house has an open plan, with rooms arrayed in 'V'- or 'L'-shape around a courtyard. In the apex of the 'V' or 'L,' you'll generally find the living room, with bedrooms to one side, and kitchen, dining, and service areas to the other.
The street-side façade is blank, but the courtyard side embraces the out-of-doors -- in the old days, through large windows, and later, through sliding walls of glass. Between interior and exterior, May ran a 'corredor,' a covered walkway. He sometimes moved the corredor away from the house, turning it into a fourth wall around the patio. The result was a house with an outdoor hole-in-the-center, much like an Eichler atrium.
But what was most characteristic of a May house is its layout. "The plan is what counts," he always said. A May house, except for the smallest tract homes, sprawls across the landscape with subsidiary wings -- often for guest rooms, stables, garages, carports, or workrooms -- appended to the basic 'V' shape. The resulting plan can even look like a pinwheel. "It's like a piece of rope," May said of a typical plan. "You could bend it around and get the absolute best out of it."
May's roofs have broad overhangs supported by rafters that often taper. "The doors can stay open even when it's raining," says Darrell Caraway, an architect who worked with May in the early 1980s. May worked with top landscape designers, including modernists Doug Baylis and Tommy Church, to integrate the houses into the landscape, with lawns reaching the foundations, and mature landscaping of sycamores, birch, and oaks. "The smooth rolling line of the terrain always made his houses look good," Caraway says.
A May house is built on a concrete slab, often with radiant heat, and is on grade. May avoided steps whenever possible -- and avoided grading. He wanted people to be able to step outside without going up and down steps. He called this "ground contact." The best houses, May argued, were built with local materials. He used local stone when possible. When it was not possible, however, May was happy to fake it.
He did not share modernism's horror of copying historical styles, of applied decoration, or of overt romanticism. May was happy to slather on Spanish motifs. May's version of modernism also lacked its theoretical underpinnings -- and its implicit socialism. Americans, after all, don't theorize. They do. And May was far too individualistic to feel comfortable with socialism.
But May's houses were recognized as modern by clients and by his many fans in the popular architectural press. "A house can be modern and not look it," 'House Beautiful' crowed about the Goodrich house in October 1945. Editor Elizabeth Gordon loved the house's "well-engineered" spaces, its use of ramps ("safer and less tiring" than stairs), and its modern conveniences -- including paired husband-and-wife basins in the master bath.
"It's the untutored who still think that modern means flat roofs, stark lines. This ranch house is as modern as molded steel, yet it has been designed of such time-honored materials as board-and-batten, hand-split cedar shake roof. It's not what 'is' used, but 'how.'"
But nothing ties May more closely to the modernists than their shared belief that architecture could improve the lot of mankind. To May the ranch house was not a style, but a way of life. Ranch houses provided a layout -- and a relaxed attitude -- that would enable people to live active, healthful, family-oriented outdoor lives. "People don't know how to live," May complained in his oral history. "People just do not know how to live."
Among May's innovations are many taken for granted today. In the '30s, he moved the garage from the backyard to the street to create more usable backyard space. Also from the start of his career, he oriented the house towards the back courtyard -- a strategy that would be used by California modernists like Eichler in the 1950s.
Although he may not have put much faith in tomorrow, May clearly believed that today needed to be better than yesterday. From the start of his career, he worked to make every house better than the one before. He built five houses for himself and his family during his career, each a series of experiments.
May was attracted to gadgetry. He loved powerful cars and flew his own plane. He loved comfort and freedom from drudgery. May saw the home not as a machine for living, but as an indoor-outdoor mini-paradise.
By 1939 he was equipping his homes with outdoor lighting that gradually turned on as night fell, creating soft, continuous, indoor-outdoor illumination. In 1946 May equipped the family home with an intercom system that let Cliff and Jean May listen in on their kids playing in their bedrooms or patio, a microphone at the dinner table to summon the help, and a gas-fired incinerator to avoid "unsightly piles of refuse." That was one experiment May was glad he tried out in his own home first -- as it almost caught the place on fire.
May grew up in San Diego. His mother was part of the Estudillo family, who had been in the state since the 1790s. Cliff spent time with his Aunt Jane Magee ("the lima bean queen of California"), whose ranch included early adobe haciendas.
May drifted into architecture. His first career was the saxophone, and he had success with the five-piece Cliff May Orchestra, performing at the Hotel del Coronado and on radio. Their theme song was 'Thanks for the Buggy Ride.' When the Pantages vaudeville circuit turned them down, though, May turned to furniture making. He manufactured Monterey-style furniture, which he installed in model homes offered for sale by Roy Lichty, who would become Cliff's father-in-law.
Soon, working with developers, May was designing homes complete with tiled roofs, Mexican fireplaces and courtyards. "I built my first house," May said, "and away I went." By the time May left San Diego, in 1937, he had designed about 50 houses. An early client, John A. Smith, convinced May to move to Los Angeles in 1937, arguing that it would be a faster-growing market. They became partners. "People seemed to help young people in those days, not like they do now," May said in his oral interview. "Now, they don't think much of young people."
May hit big after World War II. With GIs returning home, housing boomed. May's homes had always gotten positive press -- 'Architectural Digest' loved them from the mid-'30s -- but he really broke through in the mid-'40s, with long articles in 'Sunset,' 'Better Homes and Gardens,' and 'House Beautiful.'
'Sunset' published 'Sunset Western Ranch Houses,' in 1946, a compilation by May of his and other architects' designs. In 1958 Sunset came out with an all-May book, 'Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May.' May also designed the magazine's headquarters in Menlo Park. By 1948, May recalled, "We were deluged with as many (projects) as we could build, more than our share."
One of May's wildest experiments -- a house for himself and family -- was designed with Chris Choate, a younger colleague. His 'experimental ranch house' was filled with light thanks to a 288-foot motorized skylight that opened the entire central section to the sky. Inside, the only real walls bordered the bathrooms -- and didn't extend to the ceiling. The master bedroom was separated from living areas only by drapes, and mahogany cabinetry on wheels could be moved to create bedrooms or dens as needed.
The skylight would open automatically when hot, and close when cold; and a Nylon sunshade could be used at noon to cut glare and heat. The house had its problems, he told Laskey. "You'd look up at the sky and the flies would come sailing in; and the leaves would fall off the sycamore trees and land in the living room, and you'd have to pick up the leaves." But skylights remained a trademark ever after. "You're more mentally at rest in natural light," he said.
His next house, Mandalay, "a house that I built to end all houses," started out big and kept getting bigger. May enlarged it 13 times, "and the living room is still too tight," he told his oral historian. The main area of the house is one giant room. The home has long, low gables, walls of glass -- and a skylight that extends through the house along the ridge from front overhang to rear wall. Spanish chandeliers provide period charm. The ceiling of rustic pine boards is open-beamed; the fireplace is whitewashed stone found on the site.
Caraway, May's young colleague, remembers driving to the home every day for lunch with May, who piloted his Lincoln Continental V-8 down the gravel road that led from office to home. "He didn't like pavement," Caraway says. "Everything had to be gravel." The moment they opened the front door, the home and gardens were automatically flooded with the sounds of the big bands.
Although May slowed down in later years, he never retired. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, he continued to work. He died in his office in October 1989 at age 81.
By all accounts, May was a happy man. He had three daughters and a son, had several wives, and hundreds of friends worldwide. Regrets? He hated what traffic and smog had done to his beloved, adopted city, he told a friend. "Don't they realize how special Los Angeles is?"
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Pre-fabs a Mixed Blessing for May
'Small' was not Cliff May's thing. But just as he was starting Mandalay, a home for himself, he gave small houses a shot because he believed all people should be able to live 'ranch style.'
In the younger Chris Choate, whom May hired originally to do architectural renderings, he found a man who loved to philosophize. Before the war, Choate had worked on low-cost worker housing. He and May were soon working up a 'thought experiment' about building the lowest-cost house possible. Their first version was, in it entirety, a single wall -- just to hide behind.
But, practical guy that he was, May got serious. In 1952 May and Choate designed, copyrighted, and marketed the 'Low-Cost House Building System,' a kit of parts (pre-cut lumber, wall panels, prefabricated utility, and bathroom units) with surprising success. Designs were sold to developers for $225 to $300 a house, and factories found to manufacture the parts. The modular houses ranged from 750-1,100 square feet.
"He was one of the most successful prefab designers in history," says Joe Barthlow, a Cliff May aficionado who lives in a neighborhood of his homes in Eugene, Oregon. "He really made modernism affordable."
By October 1952, 'House and Home' reported, developers Al Stern and Dick Price sold 300 of the homes in three weeks "in a thin market" in Cupertino, near San Jose. "Their fresh, new designs are the talk of the West Coast." The 1953 model -- better than the '52, of course -- also sold well, 'House and Home' reported in July. The system had been simplified so construction was even faster, and the homes had broader windows and a better feel.
Ross Cortese built 950 of the low-cost homes in Long Beach.
For May, though, the prefabs were a headache. "We just had problems, problems, problems," he said. Each city and lender had different requirements. May found himself flying across the country 15 or 20 times to iron things out. (May had a trick for keeping himself occupied while piloting his plane. "In the old days," he told Laskey, "I used to play the saxophone when I flew on long trips. I had auto-pilot so I could sit right there and look and think.")
"But when we got through," he said of his low-cost home venture, "I hadn't been very happy doing it."
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