Tracing Ownership of the House with the Maybeck "Proof Letter"

I decided to revisit the “proof letter” because after 8 years in this house, it’s the only piece of paper that actually has Maybeck’s name on it and seems to be the closest thing we will ever have to the true story of the house.

The basics of the letter are that Fred and Ada Hacking are writing a letter to Anton Zikmund and his wife about the house. It seems like the Hackings are in the process of moving out and the Zikmunds are moving in. The date is 1/2/1951. The part that is crossed out seems to be about payment for the house but the majority of the letter is about a visit by the builder Volney Rowland where he tells about the construction of the house and mentions it was designed by Maybeck on page 2.

As I matched up the unusual stylistic details of the house with pictures in the books about Maybeck I have, I became convinced that stylistic details, the Rowland-Maybeck connection, and this letter were enough to prove that our house was designed by Maybeck. Unfortunately some local architecture people are not fully convinced it’s a Maybeck so I decided to take another route: I traced the Hackings, the Zikmunds, and all the other owners of the house.

https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4q2nb3rt/?brand=oac4

Fred Hacking was a photographer who worked at Eastman Kodak in San Francisco. Using the old phonebooks at the Oakland Library, I was able to trace Fred and Ada’s time in our house from 1946-1951. I know that Dr. Woodburn K Lamb owned the house after Mrs. Kingsley who moved out at the end of 1940. I also checked Zikmund while I was in the phonebooks. Here’s a brief outline

1927-1940: Mrs. Mary B Kingsley

1941-44: Dr. Woodburn K. Lamb and family

1945: [Unknown]

1946-51: Fred and Ada Hacking

1951-53: Dr. Anton Zikmund and Family

But of course I couldn’t stop there. I found a listing in Google books for Plainfield at our address in the ‘50s. I also looked up the family that sold me the house, the Hughes.

1954-59: Sanford and Ruth Oppenheimer Plainfield

1960-2015: Teddy V Hughes, Hughes Trust

2015: Me

I enjoyed finding little things about the people who lived here. Here are a couple below:

Ruth O. Plainfield was an interesting person. Her family fled Nazi Germany and you can see her recollection of that here:

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn507711

Another little tidbit I found was Mimi Zikmund participated in a fashion show at her middle school and it ended up in the paper:

Stay tuned for part two where I trace the for sale listings of the house.