{"id":244230,"date":"2011-04-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/sohos-41st-annual-home-tour\/"},"modified":"2011-04-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T07:00:00","slug":"sohos-41st-annual-home-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/sohos-41st-annual-home-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"SOHO’s 41st annual home tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SOHO&#039;s<\/a>
\nPor Dave Schwab
\n<\/strong>
\nSave Our Heritage Organisation\u2019s (SOHO\u2019s) 41st annual home tour weekend Saturday and Sunday March 26-27 was a special treat offering a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to view Southern California master builder Cliff May\u2019s early work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was our big event, our biggest fundraiser of the year,\u201d noted Bruce Coons, executive director of SOHO, which has served San Diego\u2019s historic preservation needs since 1969.<\/p>\n

Billed as \u201cunprecedented,\u201d this year\u2019s SOHO tour featured six homes built between 1932 and 1936 in the 50-plus-year career of Cliff May, known as the \u201cfather\u201d of the American Ranch House.<\/p>\n

May left his indelible stamp on the architectural field in San Diego and the rest of Southern California, said Coons.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe influenced more architects than any other architect who hailed from San Diego,\u201d Coons said, noting May built about 50 homes in San Diego before moving to larger pastures in Los Angeles. \u201cHe later came back to San Diego and did another 25 or so homes after that,\u201d he said, adding May\u2019s earlier work was \u201cmore characteristic\u201d of his literal interpretation of the Mexican hacienda.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knew all the Ranchos and he was really interested in the whole idea of integrating the indoors and the outdoors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coons said May is notable for taking the region\u2019s \u201cnative\u201d Old Spanish and Mexican architecture and adapting it to San Diego\u2019s climate and other factors.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe modernized it, made it accessible to the masses and a whole generation of Americans,\u201d concluded Coons, noting May \u201cwas the first one (builder) to really shove the garage forward so the rest of the lot could be used for the house. He started adding adobe sections, and that morphed over time into the ranch house.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2011 SOHO tour covered several communities, including Talmadge Park, Presidio Hills, Point Loma and Loma Portal. Each featured May\u2019s experimental, early hacienda style and his fascination with the early California adobe haciendas and ranchos. Visitors were able to view firsthand the origins of his signature style.<\/p>\n

Kensington resident Barbara Roper and landscape architect Gail Garbini owned two homes on the tour.<\/p>\n

Roper exhibited her 2,300-square-foot 1933, early \u201cMay,\u201d which is on the National Register of Historic Places.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s considered his oldest and most original home, which has seen the least amount of changes,\u201d she said, noting her family is the property\u2019s 12th owner.<\/p>\n

The Roper\u2019s Cliff May home is distinguished in a number of ways, particularly in the details of its five fireplaces\u2014each unique.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all look different, have different elevations,\u201d Roper noted, adding her home has a distinctive interior courtyard surrounded by high walls affording privacy. \u201cIt just has so much character and personality,\u201d she concluded, noting they\u2019ve embellished their home with lots of personal touches like hand painted floral designs on doors, beams and outdoor shutters.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoper said her May \u201coriginal\u201d is not only aesthetically appealing but eminently functional and exceedingly
\npractical.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love living in this house,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderfully cool in the summer: We have no air conditioning
\nand don\u2019t need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garbini described the SOHO Tour as \u201cwonderful,\u201d noting it was well attended by the public as well as by descendents of both Cliff May and his early benefactors. She added descendents of Wilbur Hale and his craftsmen, master builder of the O\u2019Leary house, also attended the tour.<\/p>\n

People appreciated the \u201cauthenticity\u201d of the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy virtue of the large number of people who toured the homes, there is evidently great interest in the style of architecture and furniture associated with Cliff May,\u201d Garbini noted. \u201cAll the homes on the tour were representative of his early work in the 1930s, and the homes were documented Cliff May-designed homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alana Coons, SOHO\u2019s events and education director, characterized the tour\u2019s turnout as \u201cincredibly successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had well over 1,000 people, and most were thrilled,\u201d she said, noting the only downside was homes, because they were required to be \u201cearly\u201d Mays, were widely distributed geographically requiring tour participants to \u201ccover a lot of ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lines were long but went quickly,\u201d Alana Coons said, adding \u201cPeople also said they hope we do more tours featuring single architects, which was our plan anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coons added SOHO\u2019s tours\u2014this one no exception\u2014are noted for their educational value.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a 64-page, really intense program,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had lectures (on Cliff May) the day before for those who wanted real in-depth knowledge. Our docents on the tour have also been with us (SOHO) for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce and Alana Coons\u2019 historic May home in Loma Portal was one of the six featured on the tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cOurs was the fourth home he built and the first he commissioned,\u201d Alana Coons said. \u201cAll of the Cliff May homes on the tour, not just ours, are of great national importance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SOHO Cliff May home tour, said Alana Coons, also clued people in on what\u2019s involved in restoring a historical dwelling.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople learned these houses don\u2019t start out being picture-perfect, that it takes a lot of time\u2014and research\u2014to restore them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cliff May will always be remembered as the developer of the suburban, post-World War II California Ranch \u201cdream home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in San Diego, May built Monterey-style furniture in his youth. Though he never formally registered as a licensed architect, he went on to do housing projects, both individual and tract, throughout Southern California in the San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara areas.<\/p>\n

Over the course of his career, May designed a multitude of commercial buildings and more than 1,000 custom residences. He died in 1989 at the age of 81 at his estate in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in Brentwood, California.<\/p>\n

For more information about Cliff May consult \u201cCliff May and the Modern Ranch House.\u201d To learn more about SOHO, visit: sohosandiego.org, or call SOHO at (619) 297-9327.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dave Schwab Save Our Heritage Organisation\u2019s (SOHO\u2019s) 41st annual home tour weekend Saturday and Sunday March 26-27 was a special treat offering a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to view Southern California master builder Cliff May\u2019s early work. \u201cThis was our big event, our biggest fundraiser of the year,\u201d noted Bruce Coons, executive director of SOHO, which […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":243246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"SOHO's 41st annual home tour","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}