Constructed of glass, steel and redwood, 141 Fairlawn Dr. is a glittering, transparent jewel box cleverly embedded into a slanted, tree-studded lot in the Berkeley Hills. Dubbed “the Photographer’s House,” it was commissioned in 1972 by the prominent architectural photographer Henry Bowles, who chose the then up-and-coming modernist architect Andrew Batey. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, the Photographer’s House is for sale, asking $1.088 million.
Fresh from his education — a broad one, with stints in at Oxford in England, as well as in Mexico — Batey was only 28 years old when he designed 141 Fairlawn. Eventually, he would go on to co-found the firm of Batey and Mack with fellow architect Mark Mack. In the mid 1980s, it would be chosen as one of just seven out of 33 hopefuls to compete to design the new Getty art museum in Los Angeles. The New York Times called the firm “a young San Francisco firm of great promise,” even though the museum’s board ultimately chose architect Richard Meier, who had won the Pritzker Prize. Throughout his career, Batey created many notable homes, including a Corsica-inspired villa in St. Helena and Hennessey House, fashioned from steel and plaster, in Napa.
But 141 Fairlawn came before all of these accomplishments. According to an email from listing agent Elizabeth Lee of EXP Realty, this Berkeley Hills home was one of Batey’s earliest commissions. Bowles trained under Morley Baer, an iconic western photographer. Baer’s work was displayed in a solo show at SF’s De Young Museum in the 1950s, and he later joined Ansel Adams and Brett Weston to found Friends of Photography in Carmel…