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Joseph W. Harris House
2300 Le Conte Avenue, Berkeley, CA
Harris house in 1937
(photo courtesy of Billie Jean D’Anna)
Harris house today
(photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)18 October 2004
Brooklyn-born Joseph W. Harris (1897–1978), founder of the Call Me Joe men’s clothing store in downtown Berkeley, had a penchant for International Style architecture. This wasn’t unusual in the 1930s, when Art Deco was all the rage, permeating industrial design, commercial art, and the movies (even Disney’s animated films of the ’30s displayed numerous Deco traces). In downtown Berkeley, several prominent civic and commercial buildings proudly display the Streamline Moderne and Zigzag Moderne marks. Residential architecture, however, was much less affected by the Moderne movement, and although some Deco-inspired apartment buildings are sprinkled around town, the Harris house is the only notable example of a Streamline Moderne single-family home.
In 1936, Harris commissioned the architect John B. Anthony to build him a residence on a triangular lot at the fork of Hearst and Le Conte Avenues, just north of the U.C. campus. The lot had been empty since the Berkeley Fire of 1923. Earlier, a shingled two-flat building with an overhanging round turret had occupied this space. It was captured by a movie camera from a moving streetcar in 1906. According to a 1907 block map, the owner of record was Roberta Y. Hill.
2300 Le Conte Ave. in 1911 (Sanborn fire insurance map)
The original building in 1906 (photo: a frame from the film “A Trip to Berkeley, Cal.”).
2300 Le Conte Ave. in 1950 (Sanborn fire insurance map)
Repeated curves on three levels are traced in the map on the left (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)Extant records of John B. Anthony’s Berkeley buildings suggest that the Harris residence was his first commission in this town. According to the University of Washington Libraries’ Architect Database, Anthony hung out his shingle that very year, having previously worked as a draftsman for Ashley and Evers (1928–1930), Timothy L. Pflueger (1930–1932), and William W. Wurster (1934–1936), all in San Francisco.
John Buyko Anthony (1891 or 1896–1979) was born in Newark, NJ, and came to California at a young age. Mildred Slater (Mrs. Louis) Stein, who grew up in Oakland, knew him in high school. Anthony attended U.C. Berkeley, obtaining a B.A. in 1922 and an M.A. the following year. In an oral history, Mildred Stein told BAHA that Anthony went on to study in Paris. In 1939, he would design a French-style house for the Steins at 216 Amherst Avenue, in north Berkeley.
Harris house in the 1970s (photo: Elizabeth Crews)Other Berkeley buildings designed by Anthony are 899 Grizzly Peak (1938); 1001 Creston Road (1939); Campus Textbook Exchange, 2470 Bancroft Way (1939); 2901 Buena Vista Way (1940); 2036 Durant Ave./2354 Shattuck Ave. (1946); and a Colonial Revival at the Euclid & Cedar intersection.
For 2 tickets to visit “Tony” Anthony designed house: “Steamboat Round the Bend”
(Donald Olsen’s memo, 21 August 2004, BAHA archives)Architect Donald Olsen, who calls the Harris house “Steamboat ’round the Bend,” knew “Tony” Anthony during WWII, when both worked at the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond. Although Olsen remembers that Anthony “converted a hotel into a hospital,” it is not clear whether such a project actually existed, given that neither the converted Fabiola Hospital in Oakland nor the Richmond Field Hospital is credited to him. On the other hand, Anthony could very well have had a hand in designing the General Warehouse in Shipyard No. 3, whose decorative elements—ribbed wall sections, portholes, round half-columns and corners—mirror those found in the Harris residence.
General Warehouse, Richmond Shipyard No. 3
(photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)
Looking from the sunken entrance foyer toward the living room. Door to kitchen is on the left. (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)Anthony’s most visible Berkeley building was his second Harris commission: the Call Me Joe store (1938–1958), rechristened House of Harris in 1939. It was located in Berkeley Square, former site of the Southern Pacific downtown station. Around 1946, Anthony designed another Call Me Joe store, this time for the Gallo Wine Company in Modesto, CA.
The transplanted New Yorker Joseph W. Harris commissioned a throughly urban house, with opulent detailing and rich materials that would have been at home in the swankiest Manhattan penthouse. Hard-edged surfaces abound: stainless steel, aluminum, marble, mirrors, and glass block. Yet this quintessentially man-made environment was open to the outdoors. With no space for a garden on the tight lot, the deep balcony off the living room served as a sunny patio at a time when the neighborhood was sparsely built and full bay views were to be had even from the ground floor.
 Looking southwest toward Hearst Ave. The crescent-shaped sunroom echoes the rounded contours of the living room. (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004) |
 Joe Harris on his open balcony, reflected in the fireplace mirror, 1937 (photo courtesy of Billie Jean D’Anna) |
 Looking northwest toward Arch St. (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004) |
A set of glass doors (seen in the photo above) used to separate the living room from the balcony. It was probably in the 1960s that the balcony was enclosed, the doors removed, and the new sunroom made part of the living room.
In the living room, the pièce-de-resistance is the stainless-steel fireplace, flush with its floor-to-ceiling mirror surround. Built-in fluorescent light flank the mirror behind transluscent panels. The semi-circle of the marble hearthstone echoes the exterior and interior curves of the house.
Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004
The octagonal dining room (photo: DT, 2004)In contrast with the hard brilliance of the living room, the dining room is an enveloping, wood-paneled space. This octagonal room makes good use of all four corners by tucking closets into them. The closet between the living room and the kitchen is a built-in liquor cabinet complete with mirror-backed shelves and a folding stainless-steel table for mixing cocktails. This closet also provides rear access to one of the two fluorescent lamps flanking the living-room fireplace.
Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004
Dining room (photo: DT, 2004)
Liquor cabinet (photo: DT, 2004)
Original 1930s kitchen (photo: DT, 2004)Remarkably, the kitchen has seen little in the way of alterations over the past six and a half decades. All the cabinetry is original, as well as the stainless-steel counters and the light fixtures. The fold-down electric cooking rings, probably from the ’60s, are cleverly tucked out of the way when not in use, freeing up counter space.
Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004
Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004
Fold-away electric cooktop (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)
Original 1930s dishwasher (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)
Continue to Part Two: The stairwell
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The Joseph W. Harris House was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on 21 June 1976. It is listed in the California State Historic Resources Inventory.
See also: Call Me Joe/House of Harris store
Copyright © 2004–2008 Daniella Thompson. All rights reserved.
