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The California home of late architect Walter Thomas Brooks is anything but traditional.
Perched on a hillside on the edge of San Francisco Bay, the house has a steel-beam frame and Douglas fir cladding, with an overlay of plastic shingles. Conical in shape, its front resembles the prow of a boat, with a crow’s nest on top.
“It was small but it was totally functional,” says Walter’s daughter, Sharrie Brooks, who lived there for 10 years.
While living in Berkeley, Calif., Walter discovered the lot during a tour of the area with a client and “fell in love with the view.” The architect and his wife, Jean Brooks, paid $20,000 for the lot in the 1960s, Sharrie says, and the house itself cost $150,000 to build.
A family affair
Known as “Lumiere House,” the design was inspired by a family trip to Expo 67 in Montreal, where Walter was introduced to the reflective plastic material.
Jean, an artist and schoolteacher, built a model for the home, and the family stained the wood and hand-cut hundreds of plastic shingles themselves. “It was like the ‘Sound of Music,’ we just didn’t have the outfits that matched,” recalls Sharrie.
Compact living
Walter was philosophically opposed to big houses, Sharrie says.
A living room and galley kitchen are on the ground floor, along with the primary bedroom and bathroom. The second and third floors are open to the space below.
The sunken living room was set up as a “conversation pit” with cushioned seating. The family had a custom wood table with teak leaves shaped like flower petals.
Can’t-miss features
The windows are handmade and most are angled to face the water. The spacing of the wood cladding on the walls lets in gaps of light, giving off a stained-glass effect.
What she’ll miss
The views and family gatherings at the house.
What she won’t miss
Cleaning out the ponds.
Reason for selling?
Walter died in 2024 and Jean, who is 97, lives in San Rafael with Sharrie.
Only one of her siblings can afford to revamp the house and none of them want to live there full-time, Sharrie says. “When there’s four kids, it’s actually hard to get everybody to agree,” she says. “The only thing we could agree on was to sell it.”
Market snapshot
Point Richmond is a historic neighborhood in the East Bay, says listing agent Terry Tilley of The Agency. The median single-family home sale price was $1.2 million for the three months ending May 31, down 0.69% year over year, according to Redfin. Prominent properties tend to sell for $2 million and up, Tilley says. “I haven’t seen anything on the waterfront for under $1 million in this location.”
Write to E.B. Solomont at [email protected]