for Robert was the 20-foot-tall fireplace shaft, the masonry
core of the house, a months-long effort that required pouring 50 tons of rock and cement into a wooden mold. Robert
created the distinct inlaid patterns on the exterior walls
from local pink Sonoma stone — gathering, chiseling and
individually fitting hundreds of stones by hand. ( Wright had
used similar organic wall material, which he called “desert
masonry,” on several other homes.) It was truly “a labor of
love,” his son Eric says.
Eric, who lived in the house from age 5 to 21, has dis-
tinct early memories of his father working on the house,
both before and after the family moved in. “My dad used
Craftsman tools and a home concrete mixer from Sears,
Roebuck to make all that concrete. And he used wooden
dowels instead of nails for most of the joints in the house.”
One favorite recollection: “You could look at different angles
in the house, and depending on the time of day, the light
would create different special effects. It made me appreciate
the artistic quality of Mr. Wright’s design.”
WRIGHT SCHOLARS CONSIDER the Berger house a gem of
Usonian design. The single-story two-bedroom, two-bath
home has 1,760 square feet of living space and a carport
under the overhanging roof. A low-angled roofline, hori-
zontal massing and native-stone walls make the structure
appear to be a natural outgrowth of the forested hilltop
setting. Wright based the design on an equilateral paral-
lelogram pattern, with a hexagonal living room that juts off
the north side. The living room ceiling is higher than other
rooms, typical for Usonian homes, and the floor-to-ceiling
windows give a serene view of the lushly wooded Marin hills.
A sliding glass door leads onto the concrete deck, which is
shaped like a ship’s prow, another classic Usonian feature,
It would take five years for him to complete
the core of the house with enough space for
his family to move in.
