Callister’s work is some of the most stunning to come out of the Second Bay Area School. His residential projects particularly show an immense sensitivity for natural materials, spatial volumes, and siting, resulting in houses that seemed to float and defy gravity. After attending the University of Texas School of Architecture, along with his future architectural partner, Jack Hilmer, Callister settled in Belvedere, California, with his wife and children after World War II. He had a long and Illustrious career and left an incredible legacy.

Thomas Church’s influence on American landscape architecture of the 20th. Century cannot be overstated. The man virtually invented the discipline as we know it today, especially his work in California, where he lived and practiced for 48 years. During that time, he joined forces with some of the greatest architects of the period, among them, William Wurster, Cliff May, and Frank Lloyd Wright. For the latter, he created multiple gardens, most notably for the Clinton Walker house at Carmel, Wright’s only completed ocean front commission. Church firmly believed that gardens should be viewed as outdoor rooms, an extension of interior spaces. His best example of this is arguably the garden he created at the headquarters of Sunset Magazine, in Menlo Park, California, a Cliff May design. Utter perfection!

Esherick is another outstanding member of The Second Bay Area School of Architecture. Known for beautiful houses crafted in wood and exquisitely proportioned, he graduated from The University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture in 1937.

Like many young architects of his generation, Esherick headed west after World War II and landed first in the office of the renowned Gardner Daily. By 1950, he would open his own eponymous San Francisco based firm and quickly rise to prominence as a revered West Coast Regionalist. In 1959, he co-founded UC Berkeley’s influential College of Environmental Design, along with William Wurster and Vernon DeMars.

Esherick designed hundreds of outstanding houses in Northern California and elsewhere over the course of his 50-plus year career. He is perhaps best remembered as the chief designer of the original Sea Ranch Condominiums, at Sea Ranch, California, in 1966. What a fitting and fantastic legacy!

Green was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early apprentices at The Taliesin School, which was founded by Wright in Wisconsin, in the early 1930’s. Green met Wright through a commission and in the early 1940’s, was invited by Wright to join The Taliesin Fellowship. There, they developed a personal and professional friendship that would last until the end of Wright’s life in 1959.

After World War II, Green headed west to California and opened a practice, first in Los Angeles, and then, San Francisco. The firm flourished, with Aaron Green & Associates designing and building many stunning houses in the Bay Area and around the country. Wright’s deep respect for Green would lead to nearly 40 collaborations between the two, over a ten-year period. This was unusual for Wright, and demonstrated his trust in Green’s knowledge and understanding of his work. After Wrigh’s death in 1959, Green completed many of Wright’s final projects, including The Marin Civic Center Complex.

There were many Taliesin students who carried Wright’s legacy out into the world after his death. In my opinion, nobody did it better than Aaron Green. He put his own distinct and unique spin on Wright’s tenets, and in some instances, out-Wrighted Wright. This is perhaps best exemplified in The Victor Ohta house, at Santa Cruz, California, 1965. His eponymous firm exists in San Francisco to this day.

Craig Ellwood was born in Clarendon, Texas, in 1922. His family, like many others of the time, headed west during the depression and finally settled in Los Angeles, in 1937. During the war he served in The U.S. Army Air Corps. as a B-24 radio operator. Following the war, he and his brother, along with two friends from the service, opened The Craig Ellwood Company in Los Angeles, a contracting and construction firm. It was during the years with TCEC that Elwood began to hone his craft by developing exemplary skills in design and architecture. During this period, he spent five years at UCLA extension night school to obtain a degree in structural engineering.

In 1950, he received his first residential commissions which were enthusiastically received and covered by the architectural press of the day. The influential editor, John Entenza, was particularly impressed by Ellwoood’s work and began featuring him prominently in the pages of Arts and Architecture Magazine. Although never a licensed architect, Ellwood would go on to establish Craig Ellwood Design, in 1951, eventually designing three of the houses in John Entenza’s fabled Case Study House Program, numbers 16, 17, and 18. Ellwood left an elegant and indelible mark on the Los Angeles Architectural landscape. His crisp Miesian inspired houses still command attention and top dollar to this day.