Fantasy was William Garren’s stock in trade
14 January 2016
The July 1930 issue of Sunset magazine featured a cover story by architect William I. Garren about William Wurster’s Gregory Farmhouse (1928) in Scotts Valley. The article was titled “There Must Be Romance in the Home You Build.”
Garren knew something about romance, having only a few years earlier built what may very well be the most romantic house in Berkeley.
Largely hidden behind a weathered brick wall, the house tantalizes by way of its steep, wood-shingled roof and fanciful, copper-mounted dormers. Visions of fairy tales come to the fore. The heavy gate (not original but similar to the first) sports a hand-wrought, red-eyed metal dragon. Hanging above the gate is a modernistic pagoda-like metal and green-glass lantern, designed by Garren in collaboration with Thomas Day & Co., manufacturers of light fixtures.
And then there’s the Manx triskelion painted on the wall.
The glory of the house is its lofty living room. Above the high brick walls, crossed trusses support a steep roof with exposed rafters. A tall copper hood adorns the massive fireplace. The current owner installed the showy staircase leading to the second floor (the original stair was rustic in appearance, with horizontal lines in the railing and wall paneling) and the clerestory windows set into the upper east wall.
Although the Garren House is unique in Berkeley, it has several parallels in the architect’s body of work. The brick walls, steep wood-shake roof, and fanciful dormers were also used in his Meyers House, in St. Francis Wood. The courtyard, massive fireplace, soaring open roof and modernistic light fixtures made an appearance in his Kaufmann House, in Atherton. These elements were also to be seen in San Mateo’s Oak Tree Inn (1925), which Garren designed in his final year as Irving F. Morrow’s partner.
For Garren, romance in architecture began more than a decade earlier. A San Francisco native, William Isaac Garren (1892–1983) studied at James Lick High School and the University of California, obtaining his Master of Engineering and architect’s certificate in 1916. While still a student, he worked as a draftsman in Louis Christian Mullgardt’s office and was employed at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. In addition to assisting Mullgardt, he helped the French architect Henri Guillaume, who was building a replica of the Parisian Palais de la L�gion d’Honneur, which served as the French pavilion at the exposition. Garren reportedly converted all the plan measurements from the metric to U.S. customary units.
During World War I, Garren was posted to France with the U.S. Army’s 21st Engineers, building light railways. After the armistice he was selected for post-war education in Britain and enrolled in a course of Housing and Town Planning at the University of London.
From 1916 until 1925, Garren practiced in partnership with Morrow. Among their projects were a cinema and stores in West Portal, San Francisco; the San Mateo Theater; and the Oakland Jewish Community Center (designed by Garren), which was described as “an unusually beautiful building” in The Jewish Center issue of June 1924.
When Morrow married architect Gertrude Comfort, she became his partner, and Garren launched a separate practice. He designed cinemas in Oakland, Redwood City, and San Jose, as well as private residences all over the Bay Area. His work was published in The Architect and Engineer, where was a consulting editor. In the 1930s he served as president of the State Association of the AIA and was a founder of the San Francisco Federal Savings and Loan Association.
Garren built his Berkeley house after separating from his first wife. His tenure in this fairy-take home was brief; by 1930, he had moved to Oakland, later alternating his residence between San Francisco and Albany. In 1934, Garren remodeled the Societ� Italiana social hall on Solano Avenue into the Albany Theater. Eighteen months later, the theater’s owner died, and Garren assumed ownership. He managed the cinema for three decades and was a leading Albany citizen and local booster throughout that time, serving on city commissions, the Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, and in various clubs. Toward the end of his long life, Garren’s many good works on behalf of Albany were recognized with a Distinguished Service Award. His son, Alper Garren, is a well-known physicist.
Copyright © 2016–2019 Daniella Thompson. All rights reserved.
