See it: Berkeley home with views of S.F., bay and soaring hawks for sale at $4.3 million
A house designed by architect Gerald McCue in the Berkeley Hills that recently hit the market for $4.3 million proves that elegance and drama in a home can be simple and natural, too.
The property at 2902 Buena Vista Way is one of the most expensive listings in the city.
“This house is a rare find, on coveted Buena Vista Way, with other distinctive homes by the likes of Maybeck, John Hudson Thomas and Walter Radcliff,” according to the listing. “In the spirit of McCue’s original vision and the bucolic setting, the current owners lifted this home to the next level of elegant simplicity while preserving its bones and providing for the needs of a modern family.”
The home offers “jaw-dropping” views of San Francisco and the bay, according to the listing.
McCue, the former chairman of UC Berkeley’s department of architecture and former dean of Graduate School Design at Harvard University, built the house in 1967. Exquisitely renovated and modernized by the sellers, it spans 3,844 square-feet with four bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. The home features a spacious office, 13-foot ceilings, media-exercise rooms, and modern appliances and fixtures throughout.
The property doesn’t need vaulted ceilings and spiral staircases to be impressive, though.
“The house is simple elegance which is much harder to get than fussier, complicated elegance, if that makes sense, because you have to edit,” said Ann Plant of Red Oak Realty in Berkeley. “The house is very calm when you enter the front yard, and when you enter the house it’s just really comfortable. It’s never cold, it’s never hot, but it can be ‘view-y’ — but it’s full of light. You kind of feel like you’re on vacation. It’s like having an oasis.”
Plant said the property — built on a hard-to-find large, level lot to take advantage of the 180-degree bay views— even gives off the feeling of being in another country.
“There’s also a sense of privacy,” Plant said. “You don’t feel your neighbors, and besides having a great bay view, and San Francisco view, you almost feel like you’re in another country because you look down on the cloisters, tile roofs and courtyards — which is pretty special because not a lot of people get to look at something on the ground that isn’t theirs that’s that special.”
Plant admits it’s almost become “boring” these days to describe a home’s design as “indoor-outdoor,” but McCue specifically chose his lots to be level so access from the inside to the outside world would not complicated — “you step one step and your outdoors,” she said.
The residence has a feeling of being nestled in the trees. She said her clients liked the “rustic, nature feel of loft-like living.”
“One of the things you can do is you can look at the windows and watch the hawks fly below you, and they come pretty close to the house,” Plant said. “The hawks are pretty incredible.”
She added: “It’s super comfortable at night, too, because you’re looking at this giant wall of the world. It isn’t so high in the hills that everything you see below you is a rooftop. It’s got that kind of soft, green feeling . It’s a pretty special site on top of being a pretty nifty house.”
Plant said there’s been a lot of interest in the house and, interestingly, many of the lookers are from Berkeley itself.
“You don’t think there are a lot of $4 million houses in Berkeley, but there are,” Plant said. “They’re just not for sale. People ... improve them for themselves. This is not a flip, so everything is done perfectly — everything in this house.”
The sellers, John Missing, a retired securities litigator, and his wife Milica Missing, “put their heart and soul into creating the perfect place,” Plant said.
They are moving because of family reasons.
This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
