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Cliff May: Designer of Dream Houses

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Southern California has had more than its share of architects and designers who have won worldwide attention--Charles and Henry Greene for their exquisite bungalows, R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra for their modernist renditions, John Lautner for his singular visions, and, most recently, Frank Gehry for his constructivist exercises.

Then, in a class by himself outside the design establishment, is Cliff May, a self-taught architect who was one of the most productive and successful designer of houses here or anywhere.

May died 10 days ago at his office in Brentwood at the age of 81, generally ignored by the profession’s pedants, respected by the building trade, hailed by his clients and loved by his friends.

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Arguably, no other home designer who has ever practiced in Southern California was more sensitive to the region’s unique climate, evolving life styles and rich architectural history than Cliff May.

It was May more than any other architect who developed and perfected the style known as the California ranch house, which blossomed in the 1950s to become the quintessential suburban home.

The style was distinguished by its single-story profile, accented by low-pitched roofs and informal, free-flowing living spaces oriented through sliding glass doors to the adjoining terraces and gardens.

In a career that spanned 57 years, May designed about 1,000 custom homes and produced plans that were used in the development of an estimated 18,000 other houses and numerous subdivisions across the United States and in other countries. In addition, his plans and concepts have been freely adapted with some license around the world.

Cliff, as everyone who knew him called him, was an unpretentious original who never went to architecture school--indeed he eschewed it--and never bothered to become a licensed architect until a year ago. The result was that May never became a member of the American Institute of Architects, and therefore was not eligible for a host of the professions’s awards and accompanying publicity.

A sixth generation Californian, Cliff was fiercely proud of a heritage that included a great grandfather, Jose Maria Estudillo, who was the last mayor of San Diego under Mexican rule. There also was in Cliff a streak of Yankee, which he applied to the rendition of the courtyard ranchero he grew up in to fashion the California ranch.

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“I wanted the houses to be attractive and somehow express and serve the California life style of informality and outdoor living--that is my Southwest heritage--while, of course, also being penny-wise and affordable--that is my Yankee heritage,” he once told me.

The result was a series of innovations, beginning in 1931 with his first houses he designed and built. These included focusing the living room toward the back yard and a patio rather to the front, and siting the garage as close to the street as possible, freeing the rear for play space and entertainment.

“Houses should be designed primarily not the way they will look from the street, but rather with their practical use in mind,” Cliff said once while reviewing a set of plans with me.

“Houses should be designed so people can live in them the way they want to, not they way the architect wants them to,” he added. “Everything else follows from that.”

What Cliff said he liked to think he was designing was each client’s dream house, and he was, be it a 1,000-square-foot construction for $10,000, as they were in the 1930s, or 5,000 square feet and up for $500,000 and up in recent years.

Indeed, popular magazines such as Sunset and the former House and Garden often referred to a Cliff May design it featured as a California Dream House.

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It was an appropriate label, for Cliff captured in his designs the spirit of his time and place, in particular the buoyant late 1940s, the 1950s and early 1960s, when Southern California, with its benign weather, lush landscape and youthful optimism, embodied the dream of a better life.

Cliff gave form to that dream with casual, comfortable, affordable houses that embraced the landscape. He also designed some luxurious houses for a well-heeled clientele, here and abroad.

In recent years, Cliff would note with sadness on how the dream of the better life that lent Southern California its unique character was being eroded in a smog-laden haze of insensitive, avaricious development.

“Don’t they realize how special Los Angeles is?” he would say.

Yet to the end Cliff expressed the belief that if only architects and builders would think more about the people they were serving instead of profits and publicity the dream would persist.

“In the end it’s the people that count, not the buildings,” he said to me a few months ago at a community gathering.

With the death of Cliff May, I fear, the California dream slips further from our grasp.

In honor of his memory, friends and family suggest contributions be made to the Los Angeles Conservancy to fund an annual Cliff May lecture series on the region’s architectural history.

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