“The clients were really game for creating a narrative around female designers, and having as many female artists in the mix as possible. “There are these weird echoes everywhere,” says Geremia. The new owners, their daughters, this house, their creative collaboration-it all felt undeniably meant to be. For Geremia, the find confirmed the feeling of kismet she had from the beginning. Early in the process the builder, Noel O’Keeffe of Custom 6 Builders, discovered the original architectural blueprints rolled up and hidden behind a wall panel in a small room under the stairs, like a long-lost love letter. Soon after, Ani and Luke Wade of Wade Design Architects were engaged to help breathe new life into the residence, and they recommended that Geremia be brought onto the project too. Nine days later, the house was the family’s new home. Aware of Morgan’s contribution to the community, he called a local friend and asked her to go take a look “to see if it was worth it for me to get on a plane,” he recalls. ![]() He grew up in the neighborhood and had always planned to return one day to raise his own family. “I was looking pretty casually on Zillow when I saw the listing for this house,” says the husband, who works in real estate. That history and stylistic dichotomy appealed to its new owners, who were returning to the States after a stint in London with three young daughters of their own. Its formal rooms and overgrown gardens looked like they could have been plucked from England and dropped in California. The story goes that the Glide family commissioned three houses in the neighborhood as wedding gifts for each of their daughters, and this one, with a Georgian façade, must have been a special request. ![]() The well-preserved seven-bedroom Colonial with formal gardens on a winding Berkeley street was in an atypical style for Morgan. Morgan was at the forefront of the Arts and Crafts movement, and her most exquisite works ( Hearst Castle, the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan Hall at the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley) are now historic landmarks. Demand for her talent peaked after the 1906 earthquake leveled many beloved buildings and left those that she built, sturdily, with decorative skins covering thick concrete walls, untouched. A Bay Area legend, Morgan designed some 700 structures, including hundreds of private homes, in and around San Francisco in the early 20th century. From the start, interior designer Lauren Geremia knew that the grand house she was hired to refresh and reimagine, a vintage gem in Berkeley, California, built in 1920 by the pioneering female architect Julia Morgan, was uncommonly terrific.
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