Second Bay Tradition

The Second Bay Tradition is an architectural style, also known as redwood post and beam, that combines a rustic, woodsy design philosophy with sleek lines and a machine aesthetic, blending European Modernism with regional influence. It developed in San Francisco and the wider Bay Area between 1928 and 1942, built around redwood construction in a post and beam structural system, and its leading practitioners included William Wurster, Gardner Dailey, Henry Hill and William Merchant, with the 1928 Gregory Farmhouse in Scotts Valley by Wurster an early example of the style. After the Second World War the tradition continued to develop through the work of architects including Joseph Esherick, Mario Corbett, Roger Lee and John Funk, and it eventually gave way to the Third Bay Tradition, which carried the same regional line of Bay Area design forward from 1945 into the 1980s.