The Architect as a Biographer

Michael Mullin, a San Francisco architect, worked with Jason Porter to design the rehabilitation of the dilapidated but historic house Porter had bought in central Oakland near Park Boulevard.

Mullin's background in helping urban homesteaders in New York occupy cast- off buildings fit perfectly with Porter's intentions to improve his house in a way that wouldn't stand apart from the neighborhood.

"I wanted to feel at home here," Porter said in mid-July as he moved into the owner's unit on the two upper floors of the house. "I wasn't out to make a big deal of the landmark status. History is important to the identity of the house, but I was really thinking about the future when we were drawing up the plans."

Accordingly, Mullin focused on delivering the house's legacy into contemporary life. His design opened up the narrow Victorian rooms by removing old partitions and some original walls to let sunlight go deep into the house.

"The house started as a rich man's house and then got pretty seedy," Mullin said. "This was consistent with the times. It was downgraded and moved around, but it survived.

"Now it finally has an owner who has the money to improve it, but in a unique way. He's interested in the history but not locked into restoring a period interior. So here you have to make choices about what you will portray in the design to signify who the owner is, relative to the journey the house has undergone."

Mullin worked with three layers of history to shape the design: the historic, Italianate Victorian proportions and organization of space; the intermediate details, mostly Craftsman in character, that represent the remodeling the house underwent starting in the 1930s; and a final layer, manifested particularly in the layout of kitchens and bathrooms, that is new to the house's look and function.

Stylistically, the house is a mixture, from Victorian baseboards and floors to modern cabinetry, largely custom-designed for the spaces they occupy. Ogee trim butts into Craftsman moldings in what has become a distinctive California vernacular.

The variety of styles looks natural, reflecting the successive, if kinder, renovations a house like this would have received if it had always been used as a three-unit building.

Nothing about it slavishly attempts to recapture an isolated era from the house's past. Rather the effect is of relaying a gentle continuum, artfully belying the gut renovation that was done to achieve it.

Perhaps the definitive comment on the design was made by Helaine Prentice, the city planner who had worked to get the house its landmark designation in 1994 and who reviewed the plans for Mullin's design: "The preservationist in me shuddered, but the architect in me applauded."