Wolf House architect also designed Petaluma mansion
When Jack and Charmian London sought an architect to design their Dream House on Sonoma Mountain, they turned to Albert Farr, a San Francisco architect whose small firm designed grand residences in elite enclaves like Piedmont and Tiburon. He was the chief architect of Belvedere.
Farr did high end work in a wide variety of styles, from brown-shingled Arts and Crafts houses and English cottages to Tudor mansions and Norman farmhouses, according to Dave Weinstein, author of “The Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area” (Gibbs Smith, 2006).
“He was one of the most prominent architects of his time,” Weinstein said. “It's not surprising Jack London would have heard of him.”
But while Farr's reputation was fated to be most closely associated with a house that was in ruins before it ever was occupied, many of his other homes are still standing a century later, commanding high prices for their timeless elegance.
Among them is a neo-Colonial at the corner Sixth and C streets in Petaluma that Farr designed in 1901 for William Lewis, one of the town's agricultural barons.
A rare Georgian revival amid the Victorians, Queen Annes, bungalows and Mediterranean homes commonly found on Petaluma's old west side, the stately residence has sheltered five families over the past 115 years.
And now the caretaking has fallen to Susan Muscatell and Mike Deverell, “newlyweds” who wanted a family house big enough to contain their blended clan of adult children and grandchildren.
“Most people our age are downsizing,” said Muscatell, who is 68; her husband is 73.
The pair actually exchanged vows at the house, as did one of their sons earlier this summer.
“Mike has two adult children, and I have three, and 10 grandchildren altogether,” said Muscatell, who had a career in wine sales after raising her children. ”We just thought it would be so much fun to get married here. But since we'd both been married before we wanted to have something low key and private for our kids. So that's what we did.”
In April 2013, the pair bought the 3,750-square-foot mansion with five bedrooms, a sun porch, formal dining room and two parlors. Since then, they gave it a fresh coat of white paint with blue trim, added cheerful window boxes, combined two upstairs bedrooms to create a master suite and finished out the sun porch into a sun room.
They also tore down an unsightly old garage from the 1920s, replacing it with a garage that melded with the architecture so well that Heritage Homes and Landmarks of Petaluma, a local preservation group, singled it out for a special preservation award last year.
The public can take a peek inside on Sept. 18 during the upcoming Heritage Homes Biennial House Tour. The house is among seven residences open to visitors, including others designed by Brainerd Jones, a contemporary of Farr and perhaps the most prolific early 20th century architect in Petaluma.
But Farr also left a mark on the town with five distinctive homes, including one just up C Street he built in 1910 for Lillian Lewis Fleissner, the daughter of William and Mary Lewis. He did another house on Eighth Street for the same couple 13 year later.
“A lot of people think Petaluma was nothing but chickens,” said Katherine Rinehart, a historian who oversees the History and Genealogy Library that is part of the Sonoma County Library.
Rinehart said Petaluma of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot of residents made rich by agriculture, either directly from large landholdings or through support services like grain and banking. And that wealth was poured into impressive homes by prominent Bay Area architects like Julia Morgan, Earnest Coxhead and Farr, who also designed The Benbow Inn in Garberville.
“All that money had to go somewhere,” Rinehart said.
The Londons hired Farr to build The Wolf House after Charmian's cousin hired him in 1907 to design a house in Atherton. It burned before they could move it, but after Jack died, Charmian turned again to Farr to design the home that would one day contain a museum to her husband - The House of Happy Walls, now part of Jack London State Park. Farr obliged, despite evidence that London was arrears in his payment for The Wolf House.
Known to friends as “Bert,” Albert Farr was born in Omaha; grew up in Yokohama, where his father ran the postal system; and later returned to Oakland, where his dad served as postmaster, Weinstein said.
He was not formally trained but apprenticed with a British architect, Frederick Richard Barker. By the late 1890s he had developed a wealthy clientele. He continued to design houses, churches and public and commercial buildings until a few years before his death in 1947.
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