Maybeck was equally comfortable producing works in the American Craftsman, Mission Revival, Gothic revival, Arts and Crafts, and Beaux-Arts styles, believing that each architectural problem required development of an entirely new solution. While working in the office of A. Page Brown in San Francisco, Maybeck probably contributed to the Mission Style California Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and was one of the designers of the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church, which included the first Mission Style chair.[4][5] For the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, he designed the domed Palace of Fine Arts[6] and also the "House of Hoo Hoo", a "lumberman's lodge" made of rough-barked tree trunks. The Palace of Fine Arts was seen as the embodiment of Maybeck's elaboration of how Roman architecture could fit within a California context. Maybeck said that the popular success of the Palace was due to the absence of a roof connecting the rotunda to the art gallery building, along with the absence of windows in the gallery walls and the presence near the rotunda of trees, flowers and a water feature.[7] In 1928, he designed the Harrison Memorial Library in Carmel in a Spanish Eclectic style.[8][9]
One of Maybeck's most interesting office buildings is the home of the Family Service Agency of San Francisco at 1010 Gough Street, from 1928, which is on the city's Historic Building Register. Some of his larger residential projects, particularly those in the Berkeley hills such as La Loma Park, have been compared to the ultimate bungalows of the architects Greene and Greene.[13]
Maybeck had many ideas about town planning that he elaborated throughout his career. As a citizen of Berkeley from the 1890s, he was intimately involved in the Hillside Club. His associations and work there helped evolve ideas about hillside communities. Maybeck developed a number of firm beliefs in how civilization and the land should relate to each other.[14] Two overriding principles would be: 1) the primacy of the landscape - geology, flora and fauna were not to be subdued by architecture so much as enhanced by architecture 2) roads should pattern the existing grade and not be an imposition upon it. There were other principles he would elucidate, such as a shared public landscape, but these were key, and helped Berkeley evolve into a paradigm for hillside living that was organic and unique.[15] Maybeck's visions for communities in the East Bay were also a conscientious counterpoint to across the bay where in San Francisco city planning was much more conventional, forced, and regimented into expansive grids of streets. Its grids, imposed in places on very steep grades, resulted in extremely steep streets, sidewalks and urban transitions, some almost comically so.
A lifetime fascination with drama and the theater can be seen in much of Maybeck's work. In his spare time, he was known to create costumes, and also designed sets for the amateur productions at the Hillside Club.[18]
Hillside Club (1906, rebuilt 1924) — Cedar Street, North Berkeley, a city designated Berkeley Landmark.[28] The original 1906 clubhouse was destroyed in the 1923 Berkeley Fire. Maybeck's brother-in-law, John White, designed the current clubhouse in 1924.
Goslinsky Residence (1909) — 3233 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, California
Roos House (1909) — Tudor Revival and other styles, at 3500 Jackson Street at Locust, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California, NRHP-listed & San Francisco Landmark.[1][31]
Bernard Maybeck house and studio (1924) — architect's own residence and studio, Maybeck Twin Drive, La Loma Park district, North Berkeley, California.[41]
Phoebe Hearst Gymnasium for Women, with architect Julia Morgan (1927) — Oxford Street, University of California, Berkeley campus, NRHP-listed.[1]
Earle C. Anthony Packard Showroom (1927) — Beaux-Arts style, on Van Ness Avenue at Ellis Street, San Francisco, now British Motors, San Francisco Landmark.[42]
Maybeck designed the 'English village' campus master plan, and campus buildings including the Colonial Revival style Chapel (1931-34) at 1 Maybeck Place.[51]
^[1] One of his early jobs was with the architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings working as a draftsman on the monumental Ponce de Leon Hotel built for Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler in St. Augustine, Florida. Maybeck's father also worked on the project, as a woodcarver "Two of San Francisco's best-known landmarks were built by Germans: Joseph Strauss designed the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge, and Bernard Maybeck, son of a German immigrant, designed the Palace of Fine Arts."
^Cardwell, Kenneth (1977). Bernard Maybeck; Architect, Artisan, Artist. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith. pp. 38–40.
^Freudenheim, Leslie. Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home (Gibbs Smith, 2005)163ff and 60–68
^Murphy Donohue estate gardens − "Landscaping the American dream: the gardens and film sets of Florence Yoch, 1890-1972"; by James J. Yoch; H.N. Abrams, 1989.
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