A Rare Glimpse Inside Berkeley’s Premier Art Deco House

Beginning in 1923 and for over five decades thereafter, Call Me Joe was one of Berkeley’s best-known men’s and boys’ clothing stores. Founded by Joseph William Harris (1897–1978), the original store was a 10’ x 14’ leased space on the corner of Shattuck and University avenues. A born entrepreneur and a tireless promoter, Harris made his business flourish from the get-go, and several expansions followed in quick succession.

In 1938, Harris built a new Call Me Joe on the newly available Berkeley Square island at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street. Until then, the island had been the site of the Southern Pacific downtown station, a 1907 Beaux-Arts building designed by SP company architect D.J. Patterson (some say by John Galen Howard). Between the station and University Avenue, SP had a small park with grassy plots and palm trees.

Brooklyn-born Harris had a penchant for International Style architecture. This wasn’t unusual in the 1930s, when Art Deco was all the rage, permeating industrial design, commercial art, and the movies (even Disney’s animated films of the ’30s displayed numerous Deco traces). In downtown Berkeley, several prominent civic and commercial buildings proudly display the Streamline Moderne and Zigzag Moderne marks. Residential architecture, however, was much less affected by the Moderne movement, and although some Deco-inspired apartment buildings are sprinkled around town, the Harris house is the only notable example of a Streamline Moderne single-family home.

In 1936, Harris commissioned the architect John B. Anthony to build him a residence on a gore lot at the fork of Hearst and Le Conte avenues, just north of the U.C. campus. The lot had been empty since the Berkeley Fire of 1923. Earlier, a shingled two-flat building with an overhanging round turret had occupied this space. It was captured by a movie camera from a moving streetcar in 1906. According to a 1907 block map, the owner of record was Roberta Y. Hill.

Extant records of John B. Anthony’s Berkeley buildings suggest that the Harris residence was his seventh commission in this town. Building permits bearing his name begin in 1935, the first two projects having been the Colonial Revival Van T. Ellsworth house at 1643 Le Roy Avenue and the David Weeks house at 1540 Le Roy. The University of Washington Libraries’ Architect Database suggests that Anthony hung out his shingle in 1936, having previously worked as a draftsman for Ashley and Evers (1928–1930), Timothy L. Pflueger (1930–1932), and William W. Wurster (1934–1936), all in San Francisco.

John Buyko Anthony (1891 or 1896–1979) was born in Newark, NJ, and came to California at a young age. Mildred Slater (Mrs. Louis) Stein, who grew up in Oakland, knew him in high school. Anthony attended U.C. Berkeley, obtaining a B.A. in 1922 and an M.A. the following year. In an oral history, Mildred Stein told BAHA that Anthony went on to study in Paris and, in 1939, designed a “French-style” house for her and her husband at 216 Amherst Avenue, in north Berkeley.

Between 1935 and 1946, Anthony worked on 60 projects in Berkeley, 42 of which were new constructions. He designed in various idioms; New England– or French-style Colonial Revival plans emerged from his office side-by-side with strikingly modern buildings. Typically, his residential work was far more traditional than his commercial output. Among the latter were the modern Campus Textbook Exchange at 2470 Bancroft Way (1939) and a Hertz Driv-Ur-Self dealership at 2354 Shattuck Avenue (1946). The Harris House is one of very few audacious residential designs by Anthony, thanks, no doubt, to its owner’s taste. 

Architect Donald Olsen, who called the Harris house “Steamboat ’round the Bend,” knew “Tony” Anthony during World War II, when both worked at the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond. Although Olsen remembers that Anthony “converted a hotel into a hospital,” it is not clear whether such a project actually existed, given that neither the converted Fabiola Hospital in Oakland nor the Richmond Field Hospital is credited to him. On the other hand, Anthony could very well have had a hand in designing the General Warehouse in Shipyard No. 3, whose decorative elements—ribbed wall sections, portholes, round half-columns and corners—mirror those found in the Harris residence.

Anthony’s most visible Berkeley building was his second Harris commission: the Call Me Joe store (1938–1958), rechristened House of Harris in 1939. It was located in Berkeley Square, former site of the Southern Pacific downtown station. Around 1946, Anthony designed another Call Me Joe store, this time for the Gallo Wine Company in Modesto, CA. 

The transplanted New Yorker Joseph W. Harris commissioned a thoroughly urban house, with opulent detailing and rich materials that would have been at home in the swankiest Manhattan penthouse. Hard-edged surfaces abound: stainless steel, aluminum, marble, mirrors, and glass block. Yet this quintessentially man-made environment was open to the outdoors. With no space for a garden on the tight lot, the deep balcony off the living room served as a sunny patio at a time when the neighborhood was sparsely built and full bay views were to be had even from the ground floor.

A set of glass doors used to separate the living room from the balcony. It was probably in the 1960s that the balcony was enclosed, the doors removed, and the new sunroom made part of the living room. 

In the living room, the pièce-de-resistance is the stainless-steel fireplace, flush with its floor-to-ceiling mirror surround. Built-in fluorescent light flank the mirror behind translucent panels. The semi-circle of the marble hearthstone echoes the exterior and interior curves of the house. 

In contrast with the hard brilliance of the living room, the dining room is an enveloping, wood-paneled space. This octagonal room makes good use of all four corners by tucking closets into them. The closet between the living room and the kitchen is a built-in liquor cabinet complete with mirror-backed shelves and a folding stainless-steel table for mixing cocktails. This closet also provides rear access to one of the two fluorescent lamps flanking the living-room fireplace. 

Remarkably, the kitchen has seen little in the way of alterations over the past six and a half decades. All the cabinetry is original, as well as the stainless-steel counters and the light fixtures. The fold-down electric cooking rings, probably from the ’60s, are cleverly tucked out of the way when not in use, freeing up counter space.

Four steps lead from the sunken entrance foyer to the hallway and the stairs to the second floor. The hallway opens onto the living room. 

The graceful stairwell is the single most striking feature of the Harris house, with its sculptural curves and fluted wall texture. The stair railing is made of aluminum.

The master bedroom is a half-circle that mirrors the living room on a smaller scale. Joseph Harris’s daughter, Billie Jean D’Anna, informed us at a BAHA reception on 29 August 2004 that while she resided in the house during the late 1930s, the glass wall in the master bedroom was all glass-block, in the same style as the living room. Joanne Goody Sicard, the niece of Joe Harris’s second wife, Frances, lived in the house as a teenager in 1956–57 (her parents rented it from Harris). She also remembered glass block in the bedroom. The conversion to textured glass must have taken place in the 1960s, perhaps at the same time that the ground-floor balcony was enclosed.

The master bathroom is a small but opulent room that retains all its original fixtures. Pinkish marble lines the walls and the shower stall, and a darker shade serves for flooring. The medicine cabinet is concealed behind a round mirror and flanked by true-to-style fluorescent lamps. The revolving toothbrush holder is built into the wall, presenting a blank chrome plate until pressed into service. The shower boasts no fewer than five shower heads, of which the lower four are original.

A narrow, crescent-shaped balcony wraps around the master bedroom. It appears that at one time, this balcony could be accessed at both ends, but the doors have subsequently been sealed. In the master bathroom, the wall facing the balcony is mirrored, with a sealed window set in. The four mirrored facets within the window niche bring into play reflections that change with the light. Unfortunately, the bay views have long since been obscured by tall buildings on either side of Hearst Avenue.

A second bathroom serves the two smaller bedrooms. This room is larger than the master bath, containing a tub. Pink tile covers every surface, including the ceiling. One longitudinal wall is entirely mirror-lined, magnifying the room’s appearance. All the fixtures are identical to those in the master bathroom.

The Harris House, which was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1976, is currently being offered for sale at $719,000. For additional articles on Joseph Harris, including historic images, see the BAHA website.