A home office refuge for man and birds

When architect Neal Schwartz set out to build his perfect home office, he designed it with the birds in mind.

He added a wing onto his modern Sonoma home that looks like a jaunty set of tail feathers or the back end of an airplane. Jutting out from the end of the single-story house on a country lane in Sonoma, the attached tower is a serene and secure nest for a man to be creative. Soft light streams down onto his workspace from a portal in the ceiling, like heavenly light from above.

On the exterior of the curvaceous tower addition, Schwartz, a bird lover, built what amounts to an apartment complex for mourning doves — a dozen nesting units for the winged neighbors scurrying about outside.

He is calling the 390-square-foot addition a ”dovecote,” a modern iteration of an old idea going back to ancient Egypt and Persia. Dovecotes, as they were known (also called doocots or columbariums), were structures built with pigeonholes for pigeons or doves to nest. They could be free-standing or built, like Schwartz’s, at the end of a house or barn. At one time, birds were a source of food, and dovecotes supplied eggs and dung used for fertilizer, leather tanning and gunpowder.

And while in medieval Europe a dovecote was a status symbol, Schwartz is interested only in being neighborly to the mourning doves that gather just outside his window.

He researched at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology the best characteristics for a dovecote, not just for show but to serve the birds. Like any good architect, Schwartz responded to his clients’ needs and worked in every creature comfort.

Mourning doves raise up to six broods a year, with both mom and dad tag-teaming with incubating duties.

“I downloaded plans for dove nesting boxes so the proportions are right and the ventilation is right. They like to have a perch. It’s all designed specifically to entice them. You just can’t force it. I’m playing the long game. And they have so many other nesting opportunities,” Schwartz said of the habitat-friendly landscape, at this moment a busy place with titmice, quail, mourning doves and others scurrying about. His patience is paying off. It appears there is at least some nesting activity in one of the units.

Schwartz, collaborating with contractor Brian Cutright of Cutright Construction, designed a roof for the dovecote that incorporates laser-cut metal shingles in a shape like bird feathers. It’s a custom touch he came up with out of necessity after discovering the cost of premade metal roof tiles. He and Cutright made their own from the same material at significantly less cost.

“To maximize the use of the sheet material, we developed a feather shape that could nest together on the sheet with minimal waste at the laser-cutters,” Schwartz said.

Pandemic project

Schwartz and his husband, Ron Flynn, built the 1,900-square-foot modern home they call Hydeaway House 12 years ago as a weekend retreat. While it is set close to the road, Schwartz oriented the house toward the back of the property, which adjoins a vineyard of chardonnay grapes. A 16-foot glass wall opens to a meadow, with a classic Wine Country scene beyond.

When the pandemic hit, he and Flynn, who was then working with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, fled to their country home full time for fresh air and more open space. Although Schwartz had been considering building a home studio in Sonoma, with an eye on eventually retiring to their Wine Country home, the pandemic hastened the process.

“It was useful during the pandemic for us. We got here and basically never left,” Schwartz said. “The idea of another workspace started to make sense in the long term.”

The project presented an opportunity for Schwartz to create the bespoke studio of his dreams, a space completely reflective of his personality, aesthetics and quirks.

That is evident from the entry. Rather than walling off the space, Schwartz left it open, with only a silk curtain separating the office from the open-concept living area. But this is not just a utilitarian drape. He calls it his Murmuration Drape. A murmuration is a flock of starlings flying en masse in shifting shapes.

In keeping with his avian theme, Schwartz printed a photograph from the artist Richard Barnes’ “Murmur Series” of flying birds onto five sheer silk panels, creating what he thinks of as a “fluttering threshold to, and backdrop for, the dovecote.”

An essential structural beam dictated that the opening remain small. But that only adds to the drama you experience upon entering the space.

The ceiling starts low but gradually rises. Light streams down but you’re not sure where it’s coming from until you’re deep within the space, look up and see a rectangular skylight far above. It lends an air of mystery.

The light illuminates the focal point of the room, a large painting by Maggie Connors suspended in a metal-sheathed frame of two vaguely human forms floating on air, one above and one below. Built-in lights make it glow. The piece is just faintly evocative of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

With its honeyed sycamore woodwork, plaster walls and transcendent art, the room has a hushed chapel-like quality, an association not lost on Schwartz.

“I wanted it very abstract so it floats in the space and you don’t now how. And I wanted the light to play with your perception of depth,” he said.

Other details are distinctively his, like the shutters that can be moved to control the natural light from windows on two sides of the room. The panels move on built-in magnets, an idea Schwartz had to extensively experiment with to make it functional.

The cabinet handles were inspired by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who designed an iconic bronze door handle for a bookstore in Helsinki that was ergonomic, organic and wrapped in leather. Schwartz, a graduate of the Harvard School of Design who revels in a design challenge, modeled and wove himself a similar “Pull-Me-Closer” handle, based on a traditional Manchurian sword hilt-wrapping technique he mastered from a YouTube video.

Viewing spot for the dogs

Schwartz and Flynn have two Spinone Italian hunting dogs, named Aldo Van Buren and Lady Florence, who naturally are fascinated by the birds outside the dovecote. Schwartz provided for them in his design, too.

A dog lounge was worked into the space beneath his desk. The cushion features the same murmuration design as the drape and a long viewing window where the dogs can watch the quail and mourning doves scuttling about delightfully close but safely beyond reach on the other side of the glass.

Schwartz said he felt lucky to have the luxury to finally design a creative space completely for himself.

“The idea behind it was, what is the space I feel comfortable in and what are the things I respond to? Why don’t I just make that? The calmness, the mystery of the light — it feels like a comfortable room, and it’s tailored to my personality.”

The pandemic and death of his parents not long before that left Schwartz feeling reflective about the passage of time. The meditative atmosphere of the space, with the soft calls of the mourning doves outside, seemed right for this quiet yet creatively productive time of his life.

“This was definitely impacted by the pandemic. I’m feeling like I’m in a different phase of life,” Schwartz said. “I’m getting older. My parents are gone. And yet I feel like I’m getting better as an architect. It’s not my final project but it was a moment to do a tiny project, a simple space tailored to my personality.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.