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Overview

The Tremaine House was one of the most well-documented California houses of the early 1950s, showcasing Richard Neutra's talents at fashioning a starkly Modern but comfortable country house, perhaps one of the most successful "machines in a garden" of its time.

Building History

Born in Cleveland, OH, Warren Draper Tremaine (1906-1987) attended Yale University in New Haven, CT, graduating in 1929. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Tremaine operated the Tremaine Alfalfa Ranch & Milling Company, in Mesa, AZ. Warren's father, Burton Gad (B.G.)Tremaine, an electrical manufacturer in Cleveland, sought a change of life around the time of the Stock Market Crash, and bought the large Bar T Ranch in AZ, c. 1930. In 1939, B.G. acquired an additional 100,000-acre spread, the Pitchfork Ranch near Winslow, AZ. Warren spent his early adulthood working on these extensive agricultural lands in the desert. He married the New Orleans-born Katherine Williams "Kit" Tremaine (1907-1997), c. 1936. This was her second marriage, and she had a son, Theodore Middleton Simmons, (1928-1999) from this earlier union. In 1940, the Tremaine ranch in Maricopa County had a value of $23,000, according to the US Census of that year. Warren and Katherine joined Southern CA society in the later 1940s, belonging to the Valley Club of Montecito, Little Town Club; National Society of Colonial Dames and theYale Club of New York. Together, they had a daughter, Diana Tremaine McGowan, (1936-1985).

According to Prof. David Streatfield, Katharine Williams "Kit" Tremaine (1907-1997) divorced Warren Draper Tremaine in 01/1969 and built herself an adobe house in the foothills above Montecito. This house burned in a brush fire. (Conversation between Prof. David Streatfield and the author, 04/18/2017.) Warren Tremaine married Pauline L. Garland on 06/22/1970 in Reno, NV. (See Source Information Ancestry.com. Nevada, Marriage Index, 1956-2005 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007, accessed 01/04/2018.)

Building Notes

Architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970) laid this house out on a pin-wheel plan, reminiscent of earlier designs by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). The building was renumbered from 1636 Moore Road to 1642, when Warren Tremaine subdivided his property, putting up a new house by Warner and Gray, Architects, nearer to Moore Road. According to Prof. Streatfield, Isabelle Greene designed the garden of this new house. (See email from Prof. Streatfield to the author, 01/04/2018.)

The Tremaines developed a notable succulent garden on their property designed by the landscape architect Ralph T. Stevens in the early 1940s. (See Journal of the California Horticultural Society, vol. 21, no. 3, 04-06/1960, p. 69.)

Warren D. Tremaine also had a house in Beverly Hills, CA, c. 1964, at1250 Tower Grove Drive. (See Beverly Hills, City Directory, 1964, p. 325.)

PCAD id: 3278