Preserving the architect Joseph Halstead Robert’s legacy

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

According to a list he made in 1926, architect Joseph Halstead Roberts designed more than 450 structures—including scores of homes, a Masonic lodge, a sanitarium, the St. Regis and Californian apartments, and Lincoln Elementary School.

So naturally, when he purchased an existing house north of Belmont Heights in the 1930s, Roberts—a Mason—redesigned it into a Tudor-style home with Masonic flourishes that he called his “Elizabethan Studios.”

“Where you come in, here is where he had his office,” co-owner Obie Scott Wade says while leading a tour of Roberts’ old studio, which the architect added on. (When Roberts died, his widow reportedly leased the space to his protégé—Kenneth Wing Sr., who worked on the Long Beach Airport terminal, Jordan High School, the Harriman Jones Medical Clinic and Civic Center.)

It’s a narrow, sunwashed entry room with cupboard doors set low. Slide your blueprints in there, Wade says, and they’d come out the other side in a hand-built flatfile. Turn left, through darkly wooded pocket doors, and you’re in Roberts’ office—paneled in the dark wood, with a beamed ceiling.

A second adjacent room, now Wade’s bedroom, must have been the actual studio. It has a high, natural wood ceiling as well, and rows of reference shelves. A fixed, dark wood ladder leads to a second niche room overhead, with a balcony. Less than 100 square feet, it’s just large enough to house a Sandow Birk painting of the ocean on the facing wall.

“Show him the cellar!” exclaims 20-year friend Lauren Burns, who co-owns the house with Wade. Later, she opens a door in the floor right outside the office—and yep, there’s the cellar, now a wine cellar.

“You can see, he put this little window here,” Wade says, pointing out how a narrow beam of light illuminates what’s now his desk. “Otherwise, it would have been too dark.”

Behind him as he works, the sun shines through Roberts’ original stained-glass windows, inset with Masonic symbols and imagery—including a master Mason at his drafting table. It feels very . . . holy, somehow—which might not be a surprise: Roberts also reportedly designed a church nearby, at Termino and Colorado avenues.

“I had always wanted to live in a church. I don’t know why,” says Wade, a writer for children’s television. You might say he got his wish—but in reality, no one knows what to make of this house.

“I have people come to the office door and ask what it is,” Wade says. “We’ve had tour groups come by.” So what is it?

Thanks to the Historical Society of Long Beach, Wade and Burns learned that their mysterious, rambling, 1,740-square-foot house started life as a classic Craftsman-style frame-siding bungalow some time in the 1920s.

“We don’t know exactly when,” says Burns, a graphic designer for Long Beach Unified School District.  By adding on his studio, Roberts encircled the front yard, transforming it into a private garden. And outside, going Tudor meant erasing that California bungalow with stucco and decorative wood trim—including ornate, curved porch supports, roof spires and a faux chimney.

Inside, the bungalow influence remains. It’s all picture rails, hardwood floors; and in the dining room, there are built-in cabinets (a secretary and a china hutch) and a plate rail. (A plate rail usually bisects a dining room, about a third or half way up—and it’s wide enough to display fine dishes.)

It’s amazing how well Roberts’ transformation works, and how well it’s survived—especially considering how misunderstood this house has been.

“There was a guy walking outside one day with his grandmother. I heard him say, ‘Look, grandma. Look at the rabbi,’” Wade says, indicating the master Mason in the stained-glass window. “Everybody projects their own beliefs onto our window.”

DO YOU KNOW A RESIDENCE WE SHOULD KNOW MORE ABOUT? E-MAIL THEO@THEDISTRICTWEEKLY.COM

Tags: elizabethan studio, kenneth wing, Long Beach, Shelter