Renowned San Diego architect Frederick Liebhardt’s final design cantilevers down a hillside overlooking the San Diego Yacht Club, Point Loma, the city of San Diego, and the San Diego-Coronado Bridge — it is the definition of timeless architecture.
The views from every room are priceless.
If you’re not familiar with his name, Liebhardt was a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright for just a few years. Wright plucked him out among a handful of other talented architects to work with him at Taliesin in Spring Green-Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. These were Wright’s famous architecture schools, or what today we might call a “think tank.” Many historical documents, including a very informative website by Keith York, a historian and architectural expert at www.modernsandiego.com, recount the story that Wright had originally rejected Liebhardt from an earlier application the young hopeful had made to Wright. A few years later when Wright was lecturing at the University of Denver where Liebhardt was a student, Liebhardt’s professor presented Wright a few of Liebhardt’s sketches and Wright said, “Come be with me before they ruin you.”
Liebhardt, while greatly influenced by Wright, was not a slave to Wright’s principles nor a diehard clone of the master. In a story written on Liebhardt, architect J. Spencer Lake said, “One of the strengths of his work is you cannot typecast his work, There’s no classic Liebhardt look, and that’s a tribute to his ability to suit a design to its purpose.”
Liebhardt is quoted as saying that his inspiration to become an architect came from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, his masterpiece estate built for the Kauffmans, a wealthy retailer family in Mill Water, Pennsylvania.
“If that doesn’t impress you, you’re not impressible,” Liebhardt said. “It’s probably the best piece of architecture of any type, any size, any anything, in the last 100 years”
Among Liebhardt’s commercial works, some of which embody San Diego’s most famous public spaces are the San Diego Yacht club, the La Jolla Country Day School — Gymnasium, Anthony’s Fish Grotto, part of the San Diego Zoo, the U. S. Naval Hospital Barracks in Balboa Park, the Sea Lodge Hotel & Restaurant, the San Diego Wild Animal Park (now called the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in the San Pasqual Valley, Marine Biology — Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Marine Research Library, The Old Globe Theatre, The Lyceum Theatre in Horton Plaza and the Islandia Hotel. This is above and beyond hundreds of homes scattered about Southern California, each designed to complement the landscape, the needs of the family while providing an aura of comfort and sensibility that cannot be captured on a piece of paper.
Liebhardt was born in 1924 and died at the age of 75 in 1995. In 1960, he partnered with Eugene Weston and together they built many spectacular properties. Liebhardt’s wife, Mimi, became an interior designer and was a respected interior artist in her own right.
This pedigreed home at 3115 Tennyson St. in Point Loma, is an investment, not just a place to raise a family or entertain guests. Lanz Correia of Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing. It is priced at just under $2.4 million with 6,200 square feet of living area. It has seven bedrooms and five bathrooms on nearly a third of an acre. This is the first time the property has been on the market.
The home is entered through a 12-foot tall Brazilian mahogany front door, built-in cabinetry, beautiful Caribbean Cherry wood flooring are all surrounded by glass and numerous viewing decks. The home was built to enjoy the incredible views while still retaining privacy. It has been on the market for 85 days, according to Redfin. It is truly a work of art and a monument to one of the county’s most creative architects.
Please send luxury real estate items to Stephanie R Glidden at sglidden@sdbj.com.