Nestled into a hillside in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mount Washington, this 1961 post-and-beam home is a classic, simple, midcentury fusion of wood and glass. But as architect Sonya Lee began renovating it, the bittersweet story of the home’s original designer, Kazuo Umemoto, came into focus. The house is special not only for its design but because it is a singular work in its noteworthy creator’s career.

Umemoto was born in 1925 in L.A. to Japanese immigrants, and while he was a teen during World War II, his family was taken from their home and interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyoming. Even so, in 1944 Umemoto enlisted in the United States Army and served two tours, first in Italy at the end of World War II and later during the Korean War.

Afterward, he studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology while the department was headed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Umemoto would draw on Miesian works like the Farnsworth House while designing this home over a decade later. Yet, this was the only complete house he is known to have ever designed, and it was commissioned in part because the clients, Donald and Dolores Hamilton, were family friends.

Umemoto’s portfolio was eclectic, perhaps by necessity. “In the 1920s and ’30s, there was an active group of Japanese-American architects in Los Angeles who called themselves the Ateliers,” says architectural historian Sian Winship. “They were going strong and getting published into the late 1930s, but after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it all went to hell.”

The succeeding generation, to which Umemoto belonged, kept a lower profile. In the first decades after World War II, many Japanese-American architects in L.A. tended to work for other people’s firms that were—almost always—owned by white architects, and they founded their own practices in small numbers. “It’s a kind of lost generation,” Winship says.

Umemoto spent much of his career as an architect for Los Angeles County’s parks department; among the projects he designed was a handsome activity center for Amelia Mayberry Park in 1968. Later, he designed one of the first In-N-Out Burger fast-food franchises, a golf course, and an industrial park.

As for the Hamilton residence, it remained in family ownership until late 2018, when professional poker player Simon Cremniter bought it and hired Lee, whom he knew through mutual friends, to renovate it. The shoebox-shaped 2,150-square-foot house has a simple plan that’s thin enough to bring natural light to its center. Two bedrooms and a study bookend a living/dining area with an adjacent kitchen. The house had barely been altered since its 1961 construction, one exception being an off-the-shelf metal awning added to the back. “The heart of the project was still there,” Lee says.

Even so, the air-conditioning was broken, the cracked pool had not been used in years, and the plumbing needed to be redone. The original linoleum floors were in disrepair and contained asbestos, and the maroon bedroom carpets were worn out and darkened the spaces. The exposed ceiling beams, which extend outside the house, were covered with a faux-wood veneer in the living areas.

Though walled-off midcentury kitchens are frequently opened up, even in otherwise faithful restorations, the galley-style kitchen was already partially open to the dining area, with a cutout and a 44-inch counter at one end. However, for times when the Hamiltons wanted to close off the space completely, Umemoto had designed movable screens, which Lee preserved.

Suspended on tracks from the ceiling like drapery, these screens are identical to those lining the floor-to-ceiling glass walls in the front and back of the house, which provide privacy and help to control heat gain. Made of many individual squares of acrylic fused into a checkerboard pattern, they are the home’s signature design element.

“I could not imagine the house without these screens,” Simon says. “The way they look when collapsed next to the wood window mullions is beautiful—that’s the house as I know it.”

“Doing the restoration encouraged me to think about what Umemoto had in mind, so it’s been a wonderful instrument in cultivating history.”
—Simon Cremniter, resident

Lee created a new primary suite by opening up a hallway and reconfiguring the adjacent bathroom, which is clad in a distinctive slatted wood wall that wraps around a corner. Fresh finishes like Heath Ceramics tiles in the bathrooms and terrazzo and linoleum flooring are period appropriate, while new lighting creates a softer nighttime ambience.

Simon, who shares the home with his 18-year-old rescue cat, Raven, has come to admire Umemoto’s abilities as an architect, even if they only got to shine in one house—and he finds his activism equally inspiring. “It shows that he was willing to fight for what he believed in,” Simon says. “I’m very moved by that.”

With views toward the San Gabriel Mountains and its lush, hillside setting, the house extends a tranquil invitation to indoor/outdoor living—and Lee’s renovation has given Umemoto’s work a chance to bloom anew. “It’s one of those projects that you feel really lucky to be a part of,” she says.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Sonya Lee architect llc / @sonyaleearchitect

Builder/General Contractor: Jeffrey Fink & Associates Architects & Builders

—

Head back to the November/December 2023 issue homepage