irvine terrace home sweet mid-century home

We live in a certifiable mid-century modern housing tract. However, most of the homes have been flattened, remodeled and changed so much, you wouldn't recognize the perfect mid-century roots.

Recently, due to a very clever Realtor friend of mine, I stumbled upon the original sales brochure for our development. Wanna take a peek?

Irvine Terrace is part of Corona del Mar (which is part of Newport Beach, California). Corona del Mar started in 1904 as a beachside vacation community. It was still quite small in 1953 when grading began on the "Old Terrace" to create a series of stepped down streets resulting in many properties with ocean views over Balboa island (not us of course). 

Here is an 1954 photo of the original grading just above the Balboa Island, the white bit of land about at the middle of the picture with a couple of lines of houses in the middle. This was the old Terrace (where I live). 

The brochure I lucked into was from the "New Terrace" which is the darker empty lots off to the right of the white lots with a few houses.

Entrez Vous indeed. Check out the wrought iron and the interior room dividers.

I was surprised to learn that Harold B. Zook was involved in the project who was a local mid-century architect and has actually retired in Corona del Mar. I have long been curious as to the architect for our home as the city only has plans from the 1980's. Could it have been Zook?

When I figured out Zook lived nearby, I wrote him a letter to ask him if he knew if he built our home (this brochure didn't have our home layout in it and was from the second phase anyway). He called me and said he checked his archives and didn't have any paperwork from the Irvine Terrace project. He kind of implied it was not a major job and he did it more or less just for the money (not that there is anything wrong with that). But he did say that our house looked like one of his. I have toured one of Zook's homes in Pasadena, and I would say it does. I'll take it.

Look at the fireplaces! Ours is like the rock wall one on the left.

Here is a piece of sales collateral which they used to write the deal up. "All utilities are underground." This is a huge big thing. Most neighborhoods back in the day had electric poles ringing the neighborhoods. Nothing to obstruct the views in Irvine Terrace.

This photo shows off the ocean for sure. Check out the translucent, Japanese-esque room screen.

Oh I love the kitchen photos...

When we first moved to Irvine Terrace, I couldn't figure out what was up with the street names. There was no theme at all: Galatea, Bonnie Doone, Marapata, Ramona, Dolphin, Sabrina, etc. Eventually we learned that all the streets were named after famous Yachts in the Newport Beach Harbor.

Neat little story about all the Irvine Terrace boat names here. We live on Santana.

Bogie and Bacall on the Santana

Yeah, that is right. Humphrey Bogart's boat.

Pretty neat, huh? To see all the brochure photos plus a map of  the "New Terrace," click here.

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