Wall Street Journal
The property built in his signature steel-and-glass style has been recognized for its ‘wonderful and distinctive’ design.
“My original plan was that we would spend the rest of our lives here,” says architect Barton Myers, 85, standing in front of his longtime home, a striking glass-and-steel compound on the outskirts of Montecito, Calif. It is a quintessentially crisp and clear Santa Barbara afternoon, and the views stretch down over the hills and straight out to sea. Oil rigs dot the Pacific Ocean, stationed like guardsmen in front of the Channel Islands, birds chirp incessantly and a lone paraglider sails overhead. “But things are different now.”
A year ago, Mr. Myers’s wife, Victoria, died after a brief illness. “She’s so present here, she’s so much of this house,” he says. After much contemplation, Myers has decided to list the award-winning property for $8.2 million.
Throughout the years, the home has served as the gathering place for numerous events and family celebrations, including the wedding of the Myerses’ daughter, Suzanne, in 2000. It has also been published extensively, perhaps most notably in “American Masterworks: Houses of the 20th and 21st Centuries,” and has received many accolades and awards from organizations like the American Institute of Architects.
An Architect’s Award-Winning California Compound
Barton Myers designed his property as a series of four single-level steel pavilions on three stepped terraces.
“It’s just an absolute magical place,” says William Whitaker, curator of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania, who put together an exhibit on Mr. Myers’s work in 2015. “Steel and glass can sometimes feel cold, but there is a wonderful sense of living and humanity in Barton’s work, so the material takes on a different character that is quite wonderful and distinctive.”
The house has also served as a prototype for a series of five subsequent steel homes built by Mr. Myers throughout California, the most recent completed in Healdsburg earlier this year. In 2017, actress Natalie Portman purchased one of the properties—a 10.4-acre estate just down the street from Mr. Myers—for $6.5 million, according to public records.
Mr. Myers was born in Norfolk, Va., studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for Louis I. Kahn before establishing his own practice in Toronto in 1968. He became known for a unique architectural style that combined elements of classicism with a modern aesthetic, as well as his commitment to urban planning and regional context—creating structures that were specific to climate and place. After moving to Los Angeles in 1984, he focused mostly on large public buildings, particularly concert halls like the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
However, Mr. Myers was yearning to experiment with residential design, especially steel prototypical housing. In 1996, his friend Vivienne Leebosh showed him and Victoria an undeveloped 38-acre plot of land towards the top of Toro Canyon. “I was just knocked out,” he says. Mr. Myers says they purchased the property for a little over $500,000. Ms. Leebosh, now a real-estate agent, is representing the property. She estimates that the plot alone is now worth about $3 million to $4 million.
Inspired by Japanese temples and the California modernism movement, Mr. Myers says he sought to design a home that highlighted revolutionary prefab materials and construction, while displaying a strong relationship to the surrounding landscape. The resulting spread, completed in 1998, is comprised of a series of four single-level steel pavilions—a main house, studio, guesthouse and garage—built on three stepped terraces carved into the sloping site.
Most of the property was constructed with off-the-shelf elements, including the steel, which was cut and welded together at a plant, and then assembled on site. Working closely with Victoria, and acting as both the architect and contractor, Mr. Myers was able to keep construction costs at under $200 a square foot. Additionally, the couple spent more than $1 million over the years to clear the land and add landscaping, including a vegetable garden, groves of blood orange, grapefruit, and olive trees and a small vineyard.
The kitchen area. Industrial steel garage doors—usually used for commercial buildings and fire stations—roll open to the outdoors.
PHOTO: DAVID PALERMO/SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY
The heart of the property is the lofty 2,800-square-foot main house, which has unobstructed views over a 45-foot lap pool to the Pacific Ocean. The deceptively simple classical proportions of the exterior—an arresting steel rectangular box that, despite its bold industrial style, blends into the scenery—belies the complexity within.
A great room with 15-foot-high ceilings contains the living, kitchen and dining areas, while the private spaces—three bedrooms and three bathrooms—are tucked in back. The entire front and some sides of the structure are made of industrial steel garage doors—usually used for commercial buildings and fire stations—which roll open to the outdoors.
“Seventy percent of the time, the doors are open, so we live in nature,” Mr. Myers says. “At night, we close up. It can get pretty wild up here.”
Living in nature has its perils: In addition to the rare bobcat or bear sighting, the house must contend with the ever-present risk of earthquake and fire that haunts any structure built in the hills of Southern California. Mr. Myers employed many features to make it as safe as possible.
Mr. Myers’s efforts were tested during the 2017 Thomas Fire, which devastated much of Montecito. “Our garden served as the fire break, and the house was the unofficial command post,” he says. Flames stopped just above the studio.