Joseph Esherick (December 28, 1914 – December 17, 1998) was an American architect. He is known for his work in Sea Ranch, California and in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

Architectural career

Joseph Esherick was born on December 28, 1914, in

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, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in architecture. Esherick worked for San Francisco Bay Area architect Gardner Dailey, and, about 1950, began his own practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. He taught at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

for many years. Esherick was awarded the

AIA Gold Medal The AIA Gold Medal is awarded by the American Institute of Architects conferred "by the national AIA Board of Directors in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture." It is the Ins ...

in 1989. Following in the tradition of Bay Area architects such as Bernard Maybeck and William Wurster, Esherick designed hundreds of houses, emphasizing regional traditions, site requirements, and user needs. In 1938, Esherick married architect Rebecca Wood, whom he knew from Pennsylvania. About ten years later Rebecca designed their own home in Kent Woodlands with Joe consulting. The style of the house with a huge gabled roof and large glass walls is stunningly modern. In 1946, Rebecca earned her architectural license and worked for her husband on a variety of projects while raising their three children. By 1951, the couple divorced. In 1959, Esherick was the co-founder, along with William Wurster and Vernon DeMars, of Berkeley's influential College of Environmental Design (CED). The CED encompassed disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture,

environmental planning Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to a ...

and city planning, and served as a nexus for figures like

Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...

, Catherine Bauer, Galen Cranz, Donlyn Lyndon, Roger Montgomery, Charles Moore, and William Wilson Wurster. In 1972, Esherick reorganized his office, turning away from houses to more commercial and academic work, with three longtime associates George Homsey, Peter Dodge and Chuck Davis to form Esherick Homsey Dodge & Davis, the winner of the 1986

Architecture Firm Award The Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor that the American Institute of Architects can bestow on an architecture firm for consistently producing distinguished architecture. Prior recipients of the AIA Architecture Firm Award include: *2025 ...

. The firm continues today as EHDD Architecture. In 1976, Esherick was elected into the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1990. Esherick was the nephew of American sculptor

Wharton Esherick Wharton Esherick (July 15, 1887 – May 6, 1970) was an American artist and designer. An artistic polymath, he worked in a wide variety of art media including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. His design works range from architectural int ...

Work

* Hubbard House, Dover, Massachusetts, 1957 * House at Kentwoodlands, Kent Woodlands, California, 1957 * Hubbard at end of Spring Road, Ross, California, April 5, 1959 * Cary House, Mill Valley, California, 1960 * Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, at

, 1960 * Bermak House, Oakland, California, 1963, with architect Peter Dodge * Six Sea Ranch Demonstration Houses (now called The Hedgerow Homes) (in collaboration with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, three small scale Demonstration houses called "Mini-Mods", as well as other private residences at The Sea Ranch

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, California, 1967 * The Cannery, San Francisco, California, 1968 * Mountain House (aka. Roscoe House)

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, 1972 * Garfield School, San Francisco, California, 1981 *

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Graduate Theological Union The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is a consortium of eight private independent American Seminary, theological schools and eleven centers and affiliates. Seven of the theological schools are located in Berkeley, California. The GTU was founded ...

, Berkeley, California, 1981 * Silver Lake Lodge, Deer Valley,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, 1982 *

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Monterey Monterey ( ; ) is a city situated on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on the Central Coast of California. Located in Monterey County, the city occupies a land area of and recorded a population of 30,218 in the 2020 census. The city was fou ...

, California, 1984 * Hermitage Condominiums, San Francisco, California, 1984 * McGuire house, 268 Seadrift Road,

Stinson Beach, California Stinson Beach is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, on the west coast of the United States. Stinson Beach is located east-southea ...

, 1987 * Henry's Fork Lodge, Island Park, Idaho, 1991 *

Aquarium of the Pacific The Aquarium of the Pacific (formerly the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific) is a public aquarium on a site on Rainbow Harbor in Long Beach, California, United States. It is situated across the water from the Long Beach Convention Center, Sho ...

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, 1998 * Tenderloin Community School, San Francisco, California, 1999

Notes

External links

Finding aid to the Joseph Esherick Collection at the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley
* Joseph Esherick. An architectural practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1938–1996: oral history transcript / 1996 {{DEFAULTSORT:Esherick, Joseph 1914 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American architects Architects from Philadelphia Architecture in the San Francisco Bay Area Architects from the San Francisco Bay Area Recipients of the AIA Gold Medal University of Pennsylvania School of Design alumni UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design faculty