The moral of the story: don’t tear down a Richard Neutra house

One of my cousins had a perfectly nice Dutch Colonial on a double lot in a highly desirable neighborhood in a suburban town with great schools. When she and her husband decided to downsize, their perfectly nice Dutch Colonial – built in the 1920’s, so fabulous bones and great details – was sold as a tear-down. It goes without saying that a McMansion went up in its place.

We see it all the time around here: the perfectly nice home of the past doesn’t have what today’s homebuyers want: walk in closets, en suite for everyone, open concept, granite countertops, home offices, mudrooms, mancaves…

But most of the houses getting torn down aren’t architect-designed, custom-built gems. They’re just perfectly nice, well built homes that lack 21st century objects of desire.

Occasionally, however, someone somewhere gets the yen to replace an architect-designed, custom-built gem with a dream house.

Such an instance occurred last year in San Francisco last year. And now he’s being made to pay, big time:

A property owner who illegally demolished a 1936 Twin Peaks house designed by a renowned modernist must rebuild an exact replica of the home rather than the much larger structure the property owner had proposed replacing it with, the City Planning Commission ruled this week.

In a unanimous 5-0 vote late Thursday night, the commission also ordered that the property owner — Ross Johnston, through his 49 Hopkins LLC — include a sidewalk plaque telling the story of the original house designed by architect Richard Neutra, the demolition and the replica. (Source: SF Chronicle)

What Johnston did was what plenty of folks who want to live in San Francisco do: knock down a modest little house from back then, when families were happy to live in a modest little home of their own. The Largent House – the Neutra gem – was only 1,300 square foot. Living as I do in a condo a bit smaller than that, I will admit that this would be close quarters for a family.

On the other hand, I grew up in a family of seven in a home not much larger than that. Of course, we had the benefit of a basement, where we could rampage around blowing off steam in case of a hurricane, blizzard, or some other act of God that kept us inside. Not to mention a large yard, and an even larger neighborhood to roam around in. This was, of course, the 1950’s and 1960’s, when free-range childhood was not just allowed but encouraged. People had larger families and smaller houses, but the kids weren’t hanging around the house.

Johnston was intending to build a 4,000 square foot house on the lot, and he thought he could get away with the Neutra knockdown by following the “easier to ask forgiveness than permission” route. There was some SF precedent for this. A few years earlier, someone had torn down another architectural gem. The upshot? A mere $400K fine. Chump change, given that the developer septupled the value of the property with a rip and replace of the old pokey with the new colossus.

He did get some planning permission, but that was just for a remodel. Instead, he brought in the wrecking ball, and then “applied for a retroactive demolition permit and for permission to construct a new home.”

Retroactive permits sound like a very thin ice proposition to me, but Johnston is apparently a gambling kind of guy. Problem was, this time the gambler lost.

Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards said he hopes the commission’s action in the 49 Hopkins case will send a message to speculators accustomed to ignoring city planning and building laws with few or no repercussions.

“We are tired of seeing this happening in the city and are drawing a line in the sand,” said Richards. “You can have all the rules in the world, but if you don’t enforce them, the rules are worthless.”

Johnston is not, of course, taking this lying down, and will be appealing. He and his attorney are resting their hopes on an earlier owner’s approved plan for a substantial rework of the property, and an argument that an earlier fire and later remodels had already substantially altered the original Neutra design.

See you in court, but this may well end up tough luck for Johnston.

It’s not just preservations in SF who’ve had it with tear downs of historically important structures. It’s affordable housing advocates, who hate seeing the stock of 1,300 square foot “affordable” homes replaced with 4,000 square foot unaffordable homes. (For the record, Johnston paid $1.7 million for the 1,300 square foot home, so even those houses aren’t exactly most folks’ definition of affordable.)

They all want to send a message, and the person they’ve selected to receive that message is Johnston.

Sure, it would have been better if they’d decided to clamp down on a speculator, rather than someone like Johnston who was planning on making the new place his family’s home.

But, hey, you gamble, you lose.

Caveat, demolitioner!

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A tip of the Pink Slip cap to my friend John W., who tweeted about this story.