Cypress Point Club
The clubhouse at Cypress Point was designed by George Washington Smith, the father of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California. Smith died six months before the building opened in 1930. Steve Jobs later bought one of his houses and spent 27 years trying to demolish it.
The architect who designed the Cypress Point clubhouse never saw it finished. George Washington Smith, the man who popularized Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California, died on March 16, 1930. The clubhouse opened six months later, on September 20.
Smith was not a typical architect. Born in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he attended Harvard's architecture program but never graduated. He left to trade bonds, made enough money to quit, moved to Europe to paint, and landed in Montecito, California in 1916. He built himself a house modeled after farmhouses he had seen in Andalusia, and his neighbors liked it so much that he stopped painting and started building for them. By the time he died at 54, he had designed roughly 80 homes in Santa Barbara County alone. His most famous client came decades later: Steve Jobs bought Smith's 1925 Jackling House in Woodside, California, called it an "abomination," and spent 27 years fighting to demolish it. The house came down in 2011. The Cypress Point clubhouse, nearly a century old, has barely changed.
Best Clubhouse's Tour of Cypress Point Club's Clubhouse
Charles Schwab is offering new clients up to $1,000 when they open an account and transfer a qualifying amount of cash or equities. Click here to claim your new account reward!
Key Details
J. Campoli & Sons, Northern New Jersey's premier luxury general contractor, has delivered high-end residential and commercial construction in Bergen County since 1946. We have provided three generations of craftsmanship for clients who don't compromise. Learn more.
- Club: Cypress Point Club
- Location: Pebble Beach, California (Monterey Peninsula, along 17-Mile Drive)
- Clubhouse Architect: George Washington Smith
- Interior Designer: Frances Elkins
- Year Built: 1928-1930 (course opened August 1928; clubhouse opened 1930)
- Architectural Style: Spanish Colonial Revival
- Notable Features: Whitewashed stucco exterior with red tile roof in Smith's signature Andalusian farmhouse manner; interiors decorated by Frances Elkins, called "the first great California decorator," in shades of beige, yellow, and melon with French Provincial furniture; the building is deliberately modest, with no practice range and no high-end pro shop, a stark contrast to the 77,000-square-foot Mediterranean Revival palace at TPC Sawgrass or the 154,000-square-foot Spanish Revival compound at Congressional; the clubhouse is mostly unchanged from its original 1930 design; only 250 members and an average of 30 golfers per day; Marion Hollins, the 1921 U.S. Women's Amateur champion who conceived the club, later introduced course architect Alister MacKenzie to Bobby Jones, leading directly to the creation of Augusta National; Cypress Point is one of five clubs in the SCAPS tournament alongside Seminole, Augusta National, Pine Valley, and San Francisco Golf Club
Frances Elkins was no ordinary decorator. The sister of architect David Adler, she had trained herself in the studios and salons of Paris, befriending Jean-Michel Frank and Alberto Giacometti before either was famous. She became the sole U.S. distributor for Frank's Art Deco furniture and designed the Loop Chair, still reproduced today. At Cypress Point, she furnished the rooms with overstuffed sofas and a large French Provincial antique table, keeping the interiors gracious but informal. The New York Times later wrote that Elkins "pioneered vibrant interiors, in which solid historical references met effervescent modernist fantasy." The Cypress Point clubhouse was one of her earliest major commissions. It remains one of her most intact.
View this post on Instagram
Best Clubhouse covers the architecture behind golf's most iconic buildings.
Best Clubhouse covers all things golf clubhouse architecture, golf luxury real estate, and golf development. If you're interested in having your golf club renovation, luxury listing, or architectural project featured on Best Clubhouse, see our partnerships page or reach out at contact@bestclubhouse.com.
