Rising from the Ashes - Page 2

"The central courtyard was very important to Chris...having that indoor-outdoor relationship with all the rooms," added Anderson, who said his goal was to capture "the general feeling of the original house, which we liked very much."

Anderson had actually been working to design an expansion to the von Hacht house at the time of the fire. After the blaze, one key asset remained, which were Hill's original drawings. Still, both Sheppard and Anderson could see ways the house could be rebuilt on the same footprint, but more suited to the 21st century.

For one, Sheppard said, "A house built in 1950 didn't actually have a master bathroom." Also, the three original bedrooms had been rather small and lacking in closet space.

Although they were using the same approximate footprint and design aspects, the project was contested and delayed for a year by neighbors, who appealed its zoning approval to the Berkeley City Council. The council denied the appeal, but required some changes to meet neighbors' concerns.

"There was that irony that, in Berkeley of all places, we were not allowed to do a 'green' roof," Anderson said of one particular change.

Because of the delays, and the steepness of the site making demolition more difficult, the project ended up taking nearly six years to complete. A fourth bedroom was added, although the square footage of the first floor barely changed. The new construction dug further into the hillside, allowing for a growth of about 500 feet on the lower floor, for a total area of 2,900 square feet.

"The old house was kind of dark," Anderson observed. "There are a lot more windows facing the view in the new house than in the old one."

Dave Weinstein, feature editor of Eichler Network and a fan of the original home and Henry Hill, toured the new one and was suitably impressed.

"I think the architects really did a great job, not only of using the same layout of the house but recreating such signature features as the bowed view window and the interior courtyard," he commented. "Henry Hill's architecture was particularly quirky and colorful, and the new house captures some of that. There seems to be less contrast of light and dark than in the original house, but that's what most people would prefer."

One stroke of luck Sheppard did have was two of the home's unique light fixtures had been removed for cleaning at the time of the fire and thus were reused in the new kitchen.

On a recent visit, one pair of observers that knew the von Hacht house both before and after the rebuild noted the transition. "They walked in the house and said, 'It's the house!' But it's not," conceded Sheppard.

Still, she said of her late grandparents, "I am delighted mostly in the fact that they would have loved it."