San Francisco Home That Influenced Sea Ranch Design Is up for Sale

By Anna Marie Erwert, SFGATE Contributor

Though it sits on San Francisco’s Liberty Hill, overlooking the vibrant Castro and Mission neighborhoods, 4067 20th St. looks plucked from the windswept bluffs of Sea Ranch. And it should: This house was built by one of Sea Ranch’s original architects, and he and his family are the only people to ever live in it — until now. For the first time in over half a century, this iconic home is on the market, asking $2.45 million. 

The 2,223-square-foot house rests on a 2,848-square-foot lot, built in what is today known as the “Third Bay Tradition,” an angular structure with generous windows and skylights bringing both exterior views and natural light into the home’s interior.

The design is that of George Homsey, “the first associate of famed Bay Area architect Joseph Esherick,” according to the official listing website, and is part of the team that developed the master plan for the Sea Ranch (Joseph Esherick and Associates worked with MLTW: Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull and Richard Whitaker).

“As the project architect for The Sea Ranch, Homsey designed the Hedgerow demonstration homes, and was noted for ‘a sensitivity to light, composition, and pragmatic materiality that made him one of the fathers of what some called the Third Bay Tradition,’” the website says. 

However, Homsey’s work on the Sea Ranch began in 1963. This home, completed in 1961, predates that work. “Although the house may seem strongly reminiscent of the Sea Ranch style, in many ways, it is a precursor to that aesthetic,” listing agent Jack Byron of Suprstructur wrote in an email. “I think one could venture that Homsey treated the building as a kind of laboratory for his ideas. The results of this experimentation informed his work with Esherick at The Sea Ranch and also contributed to establishing the tenets of what was to become the Third Bay Tradition.” 

Those tenets, though over 60 years old, still stand out as unique, even avant-garde, with features like the wavy weathering of exterior shingles, the irregular roofline, the living room with its double-height volume and a primary suite that opens to a bridge leading to the yard.

Despite this modernity, this house is still inviting, in part because Homsey made use of wood and glass to ensure that his family would be at home here. “As well as being careful to make the most of the site’s views, Homsey adventurously used rough-sown timber and minimally-framed skylights to create a warm, light-filled interior which provided the setting for his children to grow up in, and for him to grow old in,” said Byron.

As configured now, the home is exactly as Homsey created it: There are four bedrooms, but currently, the fourth bedroom is serving as a study/office. There is also one full bathroom and two half baths and an unfinished basement hobby room, which is not included in the reported 2,223 square footage.

It is a house created not only from Homsey’s designs but “also of his own manual labor,” wrote Byron. Together with friends and colleagues, Homsey “built ‘the shop’ first: a space that eventually became the home’s basement hobby room but was initially used as a base of operations and woodworking shop to cut lumber for the framing as well as store the materials and parts necessary to construct the home.”

While living at 4067 20th St., Homsey enjoyed an illustrious and prolific career. His commissions included private homes, condo complexes, student housing and elementary schools. Among his notable work, to quote the San Francisco Chronicle, were numerous East Bay BART stations, as well as co-authoring “design guidelines for Yosemite that were adopted by the National Park Service,” including a “jaw-dropping makeover of the dining room at Yosemite Lodge that faces the waterfall.”In 2006, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) made Homsey a fellow (the AIA’s highest membership honor) and presented him with the prestigious Maybeck Award for lifetime achievement.

Byron told SFGATE that after Homsey retired in 2013, the house also became a full-time office, “a place where he had regular meetings and continued to design projects and mentor his colleagues until the end of his life.” When Homsey passed away in 2019, he was 93 years old. The home, which is being sold off market by Suprstructur, will pass into new hands for the first time in over 60 years.