Tour a $3 Million Post-and-Beam Home in Pasadena Designed by Esteemed Architect Calvin Straub

Demetrius Simms

2 December 2024 at 6:30 pm·2-min read

Mid-century modern fans, get your wallets ready. A post-and-beam style home by architect Calvin Straub is on the market in Southern California, and its attention to detail will cost you a few M’s.

Dubbed the Wirick House, it was built in 1958 as part of Pasadena’s Poppy Peak Historic District, a small neighborhood known for its number and variety of modernist homes by top architects like Richard Neutra and James Pulliam. Straub, a former USC professor, was commissioned to build the house—now listed for $2.98 million—by Thomas and Barbara Wirick. Nate Cole and Lilian Pfaff of Modern California House hold the listing.

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Wirick House Pasadena living room — View from the living and dining area set beneath a double-height ceiling.

Straub designed the three-bedroom home just ahead of joining forces with former students Conrad Buff and Donald Hensman to create the renowned architectural firm Buff, Straub & Hensman. The project is credited as a definitive achievement in residential post and beam architecture by the National Registry of Historic Places. Houses constructed in this method pair together large, spaced-out wooden posts and beams to create its frame, which then supports its walls and roofing.

The home’s entrance is on the upper level, where an adjoining office and sitting area are featured alongside the lofted primary suite. The primary bedroom overlooks the double-height living and dining area below, which is highlighted by extensive glazing and slender structural framing, but close the curtains for privacy before stepping into the en-suite bath with a freestanding tub.

Wirick House Pasadena wooden deck — A large wooden deck is shaded by mature oak trees.

An interior staircase leads to the lower level, where the living room has brick fireplace and the kitchen, with translucent stained cabinetry, is fully up to date but for the vintage oven. There are two more bedrooms on the lower level, each including built-in furnishings that range from desks to bunk beds.

A courtyard patio outside the living room is surrounded by lush foliage and, off the kitchen, a large wooden deck hangs over the hillside below mature trees. Updates to the abode’s electrical and plumbing systems, as well as structural retrofitting, have been completed in recent years. And as a final perk: as part of the Poppy Peak Historic District, the property benefits from a Mills Act contract that provides owners with reduced property taxes.

Click here for more photos of the midcentury home in Pasadena.

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