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Overview

This small weekend house set in the bucolic suburb of Woodside, CA, near the campus of Stanford University, helped to burnish the reputation of the Bay Region Modernist, Gardner A. Dailey.

Building History

The Wiliam Lowe, Jr., House was one of Gardner Dailey's most famous pre-war houses, published widely from 1936-1942. The Lowe Residence, for example, won the First Prize in House Beautiful Magazine's Small House Competition of 1936; It, along with his Mrs. L.D. Owens House, (Sausalito, CA, 1939),spread Dailey's reputation nationally. This house particularly featured the "Early California" aesthetic favored by Dailey and his rival William Wurster at this time, an aesthetic derived from adobe ranch houses and spare timber-framed, rural vernacular structures built by Anglo-American farmers and miners. The sweeping, low-pitched roof of this house recalled California barns of the 19th century, in particular. Like many houses by Dailey and Wurster, the exterior had a smooth, clean appearance, composed of shiplapped redwood boards; windows with elegant, thin mullions and muntins, became crucial design features. Here, the tall 2x3 fixed-pane window illuminating the living room was the key compositional element of the entry facade.

Building Notes

Architect Gardner Dailey (1895-1967) arranged the house to step down gingerly on its uneven site. A two-bedroom wing perched just below the living/dining room wing set on a gentle rise just to the northeast. A full bath was placed centrally in the stepped hallway connecting the wings.

PCAD id: 715