Myra Kingsley: Astrologer to the Stars!

December 19, 2016 by Evan Hart

I decided to do some research into Myra Kingsley (born Almira 10/1/1897), daughter of Mary Kingsley (who had our house built at the age of 57). To remind you - our house was a 1 bedroom 2 bath 2 story house built in 1927-8. The house had a dinging nook and bedroom added in 1939 and in 1941 a Dr. Lamb is listed as living there so I think the house was sold by then. Mary and Myra were listed as living together in 1940 so I think Myra was taking care of Mary and Mary died shortly after the census was taken.

The family was originally based on the East Coast. Mary, the mother, took the family to L.A. after she separated from William Morgan Kingsley between '15-18. I don't know how Mary was connected to L.A. or the West Coast in general but it seems she wanted to get far away from her ex-husband. This separation seems right around the time that Mary took Myra to the professional astrologer Evangeline Adams. William was a devout Christian and did not approve of astrology so maybe this is why they separated. Who knows.

Back to Evangeline Adams... In 1914-15, Mary took Myra, age 18, to a meeting with the first "Celebrity Astrologer" Evangeline Adams where she told Myra that she was gifted in music, which she had been pursuing, but Evangeline predicted Myra would be a gifted astrologer. Myra's mother Mary had been interested in Astrology and in an article Myra describes reading the astrological and other mystical or magical books her mom had lying around the house. Mary was apparently a Theosophist, which is a belief system based on "a collection of mystical and occultist philosophies" (Wikipedia). Myra continued to pursue music for around another decade. 1916-20 she went to what is not called Julliard in New York. In '21 she married George Houston (who she divorced in 1927).

Myra says she went to San Francisco [Bay Area] to be with her mother and to study astrology (around 1925). It seems these two had a special bond since both in 1925 and 1940 Myra came to the Bay Area to be with Mary.

Mary suggested that Myra train as an astrologer under Milton P. Ropp in San Francisco (for 5 months) - who also had a bookstore in S.F. (that I presume to be of the mystical variety). By 1925 she was a professional astrologer. At this point, I am guessing she was staying with her mom in a large house on 135 Tunnel Rd. in Berkeley - Mary is listed as living there in 1924. I assume that Mary lived in 135 Tunnel Rd. until she moved into the house she was having built. That house, our house, was completed in early 1928.

1940 Census, and '39 additions

The music room, added to Mary's 1 bedroom house in 1939, seems to have originally been a bedroom for Myra Kingsley, who was 41 at the time. Why would you add a room for your successful 41 year old daughter? We believe it was because Mary was ill and dying. We believe the room was built for Myra because she is listed as living there with her mother in the 1940 Census. I assume that Mary had given up the much bigger rental 135 Tunnel Rd. when her house was finished but now she didn't have a room for Myra. Our house was originally a 1 bedroom with 4 rooms - living room, kitchen, downstairs bath, and master bedroom suite upstairs. In 1939 Mary Kingsley tacked on a small breakfast room (erker) to the front of the house and a bedroom with a skylight to the side. The design of the additions didn't go out of their way to blend in, even though they were built by the original builder. Both rooms had vertical 1x10 redwood panel siding and interior walls covered with pecky cedar - a material that was heavily used at the Maybeck-designed Aikin house in 1940-1. The original house is stucco outside and plaster on the inside. I believe the additions are consistent with other additions that Maybeck did to houses - where his additions fit in with his latest style - but the level of detail is definitely less than the original house and they may have been based off of only a sketch and no site visits (he was now 77).

It was at this point that the master bath needed to be rearrange to make a hallway between the bedrooms. This creates a loop in the floorplan that accentuates the original loop of the floor plan. The reoccurring loops in the floor plan are very disorienting and may have had something to do with the affinity of Mary and Myra to the cycles of astrology over the linearity of time. The typical floor plan is a linear branching floor plan which gives the feeling of progressing from point A to point B along a timeline an along the physical linear path of a hallway. It sounds crazy to speculate about this, but our floorplan is very unusual for the time and Maybeck, Mary, and Myra had pretty wild ideas about these things. I certainly wouldn't put it past Maybeck to come up with a circular floor plan for astrology people.

Myra Kingsley: Astrologer to the Stars

Later on, Myra seems to have become the "top" famous astrologer in the U.S. for about 10-20 years. In the "This is New York" column from the Oakland Tribune in 1934, writer Lucius Beebe describes it actually like Myra is inheriting the throne from Evangeline who died in 1932. "The successor to Evangeline Adams as New York's court astrologer is Myra Kingsley, and the great world accepts her in this high office."

Her prominence was noted in many magazines, especially LIFE which proclaimed her "No. 1 astrologer of the U.S." in 1939 and photographed her giving readings to top movie stars of the time.

Her "peak" seems to be a several page article in a 1939 LIFE magazine where she's shown giving readings at a Hollywood astrology party.

In 1946, LIFE again writes about her but this time says she's the "Most publicized" while a different person is now "Hollywood's favorite". Her career continued into the '50s - she came out with a book in '51 and she was still written about in the '50s, but it seems her peak in term of being the fashionable celebrity astrologer was 1939. It seems odd that she would move back in with her mom at the peak of her career but it makes sense when you realize that she died between mid 1940 and mid 1941.

In 1951 she published a book about astrology and was able to remain "relevant" in the eyes of popular media into the '50s

May of '41 has a permit listed for Dr. Lamb for the back 2 bedroom 1 bath addition - I think the presumed new owner wanted to add rooms for his children.

Myra died at the age of 99 in Florida.

A great summary about Myra comes from a a blog called "From an Oblique Angle." The post is located at http://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/three-minor-forteans-myra-kingsley-michael-blankfort-and-e-l-brancato

Original Eave Color Scheme - Key Maybeck Detail

December 07, 2016 by Evan Hart

As we were repairing the roof, we noticed the paint peeling away in places and began to piece together the original color scheme of the underside of the overhanging eaves.

a hint of the cerulean blue soffit stain

The original house had stucco up to about the height of the top of the windows in most places. Above the stucco, on the gable ends of the main roof, are vertical 1x10" redwood boards. The undersides of the eaves and the gable trim were all painted brown at some point, so that the house would have a unified two tone look - brown on the top half and grey, raw stucco on bottom. The later color scheme was more restrained than the original color scheme, but it masks a key Maybeck feature - the colorfully stained eaves.

Here is the back of the house right now, as it is, under construction

Above on the left side is the gable end of the roof - the A shaped side of the two-planed roof. The eave roof rafters on this end, supported by the projecting brackets (far left) are sometimes called bargeboards. The underside of the eave is called … — Above on the left side is the gable end of the roof - the A shaped side of the two-planed roof. The eave roof rafters on this end, supported by the projecting brackets (far left) are sometimes called bargeboards. The underside of the eave is called the soffit, and in this case it's the same as the roof sheathing boards - or the boards that go on top of the rafters to make the roof plane. (Sometimes the soffit plane is below the rafters - it's made of boards that are added to the underside of the rafters). On the bottom right you can see the redwood soffit/roof sheathing. The projecting roof rafters on the non-gable sides are simply called rafter tails. On this house, they use 6x8" faux rafters to give the appearance of heavy timber framing though they do not extend up to the ridge beam.

It seems like the soffit was a cerulean blue stain, the rafters were dark brown and the bargeboards (gable end rafters) were green! Here is a drawing I made to show what I think it looked like:

Yes it is pretty wild what the first layer of stain under the eaves looked like. Maybeck didn't like paint on the exterior of the house at this point so the only paint was on the windows, window sills and back doors. The windows which were steel needed paint for protection from rust and the back door was painted to match (though the other doors were 3" thick and faced with redwood). It's unclear whether the bargeboards were painted or stained green. For practicality of already having chrome green paint on hand I'd guess they were painted. The regular rafter tails were brown. The yellow in the pic is for the amber glass in the original windows. The color is a pleasant surprise to visitors to the house - it's almost entirely invisible from the street minus a tiny bit of green window paint and the bargeboards of the master bathroom that overlooks the front walkway.

Maybeck tended to use rich, simple, historic colors that usually echoed from nature. I read in "The Simple Home", by Charles Keeler, that colors from the surroundings were recommended as they were least likely to go out of style or clash with the natural beauty of the surroundings. The colors of our eaves easily match the blue of the sky, the brown of dirt or aged redwood, and the green of English ivy crawling nearby.

I read about a green creosote stain in "The Simple Home" (1904) giving a mossy appearance and thought that it must be what we have that in the master bathroom / changing room. I looked it up and found this in a paint book from 1908

When I read that it mentioned chrome green - which seemed to be the window paint color as that matched best from a Sherwin Williams color wheel - the gears started turning. I had also read in "The Simple Home" about a silver stain made from "sulfate of iron" which seemed to be what was on the pecky cedar in the dining add-on. All the colors were not just "natural" in terms of matching the natural palette, but were also simple in their make-up. Chrome green is simply from chromium oxide and would have been an off the shelf paint color as it still is at Sherwin Williams. The mossy stain is chromium oxide and creosote oil with added umber. The brown exterior stain made to look like aged redwood looked like it matched the paint color "burnt umber." Once I started making the list, I found the assumption of simple colors and stains seem to illuminate the path forward in terms of determining the "intent" of the artist. Intent is important because colors can change a lot in 90 years, especially with the caustic chemicals, so this way I can infer what it looked like originally and use that to recreate the color scheme, rather than just color-matching the existing colors.

Original house colors (best guess):

chrome green paint - chromium oxide
moss green stain - creosote oil and chromium oxide
silver stain - iron sulfate
brown stain - burnt umber?
light blue stain - ?mysterey?

Maybeck did not use really use light blue very often, but I think it was worked into the color scheme by the owner - who is described as adding her own artistic touch in the Rowland letter. I think this mainly consisted of her using blue throughout - there's blue on the soffit, blue under the balcony over the fireplace to match the soffit, blue painted inside the kitchen cabinets and possibly blue in the master bedroom. Oh and the same blue in our mystery cuerda seca tiles from ~1938.

blue under the fireplace balcony to match the exterior soffit stain. Also a touch of gold paint

blue paint in the master behind a shelf that was added... maybe the original color

Back to the exterior bright blue stain... The stain became a sky blue color when rubbed into the redwood soffit and its makeup is still a mystery. The other colors, from research, sort of all fell into place. I have a large blob of the blue stain in the stucco which I think was a cup of the stuff spilled in the dirt next to the house while someone was on a ladder trying to get the master bedroom pop-out area. It's really bright like cotton candy. Using the simple chemical formula theory - I looked up ancient blue colors. Historically, blue mainly came from indigo dye, or related to minerals or based on copper chemical reactions. The closest color seemed to be copper(II) sulfate, which is made by putting copper into sulfuric acid. I read about it in a book about furniture finishing from the Middle Ages. It used to be called "blue vitriol."

Blue Vitriol seems like something that would go along with the themes here and Maybeck's taste for the Middle Ages as well as simple chemical stains like the iron sulfate stain. I could also believe that it was simply a sky blue colored stain. The color, when not applied to the wood, would have made it a pretty wild stain for the era which is why it might be a home remedy. As you can read in the painters book from 1908 about the creosote stain - people with woodshops apparently used to have jars of caustic chemicals on hand to make these things. I may have a chemistry friend help me try to determine it's makeup. Stay tuned for the mystery of the blue vitriol stain...

Found more Chemla tiles in Oakland

July 12, 2016 by Evan Hart

I found some more of the cool Tunisian tiles in our house elsewhere in Oakland. The building has a grand entry in a Spanish/Moorish style and is probably from around the same time period as our house - late '20s - when this style was most popular it seems from looking up other examples, that seem more abundant in the Southern California area.

The mural looks Tunisian. There is a single crescent moon at the top of both of the murals on each side - even though they are different designs - which is a Muslim symbol. Tunisian was once conquered by Turkey which is why the pattern is similar to… — The mural looks Tunisian. There is a single crescent moon at the top of both of the murals on each side - even though they are different designs - which is a Muslim symbol. Tunisian was once conquered by Turkey which is why the pattern is similar to Turkish Iznik style.

We have the ledge tile pattern in our bathroom. The rest of the tiles above look Andalusian (S. Spain) if I had to guess.

Right side design - you would think this would be the same mural design as the other side since the rest of it is symmetrical design.

Though the building looks highly modified in the wings that extend out from the entryway, a lot of good detail has been preserved including the oversized sconces which are super cool

Old Sink Single Faucet Conversion

March 31, 2016 by Evan Hart

In a previous post I was writing about remodeling the back bathroom which had what I believe to be the original '20s sink and toilet in the '40s bath. The toilet used a lot of water and had to be replaced but the '20s sink fit the space well - it just needed new plumbing.

Around the '40s I would guess, faucets switched from being hot and cold separate faucets to being single "mixer" faucets. I saw an old sink somewhere that had a single mixer faucet in one hole and a soap dish in the other faucet hole and I decided to replicate this old school single faucet conversion with the '20s sink.

The first step was to find a faucet that would put the water into the middle of the sink where you would wash your hands. After looking around, a spout faucet seemed like it would be the ticket as it projects water from the spout and the specs said it would be about 8 or 9 inches which is what I wanted

This Delta Victorian faucet was $220 but seemed like it would be exactly what I needed

I needed two different length supply hoses

Here's the faucet in place

It was recommend that the hoses be flushed which is a good idea as I had used rusty galvanized nipples for the paint phase and some crap came out.

You can't really see the hoses but it's nice to have approximately the right lengths. The nipples were replaced with brass and the escutcheons added. I usually do finish plumbing after paint.

The soap dish for the vintage single faucet conversion was hard to find but I was able to get one at The Sink Factory in Berkeley which is a vintage plumbing store. It was a reproduction that is larger than the old style and fits a Dove beauty bar which is an ideal size. The guy at the sink factory said the smaller true vintage one would cost a lot more

So glad to find this hard to find little piece for $30

It all worked out! I reused my old sink and modernized it. It now works better than it did originally. Cost is $250 for the parts on top plus some hoses etc. for underneath. I'm really pleased with how this turned out considering this was the first time I've done it.