As a student of architectural history, Bruce Emerton dreamed of living in a house designed by one of the mid-century modernists he so admires. In Pomona, he found one he could afford.
Emerton's 1954 Cliff May prefab was featured this month on the 20th Annual Pomona Heritage Historic Home Tour. The light-filled ranch was the only modern home in the bunch, a 1950s vision of good affordable design in a sea of Craftsman-style houses.
Mid-century modern "is the next restoration frontier," said Emerton, art and architecture librarian at Cal Poly Pomona and an architectural historian whose work includes a website on modernist treasures in the Palm Springs area. "Nobody can afford Victorian and Craftsman houses in historic districts anymore."
Emerton found his Eisenhower-era gem a decade ago and has been renovating it ever since.
"I couldn't stand commuting, and I could never afford a house in Silver Lake," where he then lived, said Emerton, who paid $130,000 for the house and is now able to bike to work. A neighbor recently offered a Cliff May for sale for $350,000.
Emerton's is one of about 50 homes designed by May and partner Chris Choate in a neighborhood of modern tract houses with a view of Pomona's Westmont Hills.
Emerton lives on Wright Street, which he said is a potent name for anyone who cares about 20th century design. Since he found a choice cluster of Eichler homes on Wright Street in Palo Alto, Emerton has made it a point to check out streets with that name whenever he visits a new community.
"On Wright Street, you will almost always find a modern house or a modern tract," he said.
Emerton has painstakingly reversed alterations made to his house over the years, including removing plywood and reinstalling lower windows in the living room.
"When I first moved here, I wrote a letter to everybody in the neighborhood warning them of the evils of stucco," he said with a laugh.
He counseled his new neighbors that their houses would be worth more if they remained as the designers had conceived them. Among other things, that meant not applying stucco over the redwood exterior, as some owners had done in the past.
The May-Choate design was revolutionary in its day, as an article in a 1953 issue of House & Home, a magazine read mostly by those in the construction industry, made clear. Such documentation about his house is part of Emerton's vast personal library devoted to art and architecture, now taking up all 600 square feet of what was formerly the garage.
