They Built a Home that Crowns a Desert Hill

“They were in agreement that their home must have a free, sweeping view of the desert, valley and mountains, and be as livable outdoors as well as in for twelve months of the year…” “Its designer and builder has blended Spanish, Southwestern, and modern architectural features to achieve a house of functional beauty, simplicity in details, and living comfort…”

Arizona Highways Calls At The Bell House Near Tucson and Sees Gracious Living In a Home Built Both For Beauty and Comfort.

THE HOME OF Mr. and Mrs. William Graham Bell is the result of a compromise. He wanted it to be Mexican. She likes the modern. This is odd as he was raised in Pennsylvania and she in Arizona. His enthusiasm for things Mexican came from attending an Arizona ranch school, the Univer sity of Arizona, and flying through Mexico. She is a daughter of H. R. Sisk of the Nogales Herald and grew up on the international border, but her taste is for the modern. They were in agreement that their home must have a free, sweeping view of the desert, valley and mountains and be as livable outdoors as well as in for twelve months of the year. These they must have in unusual details, but to effect their compromise between Mexican and modern architectural features they called in their University classmate and young friend, Lewis D. W. Hall, who had previously designed the ranch home of Mr. Bell's brother.

Their home crowns the crest of a foothill in the Santa Catalina mountains ten miles north of Tucson. Pima canyon was bridged on the west to reach the site and an arroyo isolates it on the east. It is not only built on a hill, but of it. It rests on native bedrock, hill stones of ochre, gold and red are its foundations, outline its driveway and pave its zaguán, and hill soil went into its adobe walls. Nature landscaped the hill long ago with giant saguaro, palo verde, mesquite, creosote and flowering shrubs.

Its designer and builder, Mr. Hall, has blended Spanish, Southwestern and modern architectural features to achieve a house of functional beauty, simplicity in details, and living comfort. He saw to it that this home, more than most, was hand made by Mexican craftsmen and their slight imperfections remained to give irregular and mellow lines.

The most modern idea in the home is the extensive use of glass. It forms the entire outer wall of the dining room, 35 feet long and 11 feet high, which brings mountains, desert, and patio into the house. Black carrara glass was used in a circular bar and completely lines the walls of the bath, with mirror interruptions, for the master bedroom. Architectural glass makes panels in a copper-studded, redwood entrance door.

There are several Mexican and Southwestern architectural details of note. The roof line is broken and drops in conformity with the hill's slope, the patio walls are of varying heights, all lines are uncluttered, the roof copings are of cement blocks irregularly fashioned by Mexican workmen, and there are overhanging eyebrows for every door and window. The adobe walls are thickest where they bear the weight of beams for the ceilings and for the central tower.

“. . . It is not only built on a hill, but of it. It rests on native bedrock, hill stones of ochre, gold and red are its foundations . . . nature landscaped the hill long ago. . .” That tower provides a Moorish quality to the home and is a study for Mr. Bell. It is reached by a distinctive, outside stairway which breaks the 140-foot front of the house. In the tower-study Mr. Bell does the preliminary navigation mapping for flights over the United States and Mexico. There he keeps his shortwave radio, which has for its antenna the entire metal dome of the tower, carefully insulated from the house itself. A compass is inlaid in the linoleum floor, low bookshelves and old swords and guns decorate the walls.

The zaguán is typical of old Mexican haciendas. It is the driveway entrance to the parking court. The hill-side driveway up from Pima canyon is narrow and one must drive through the great, redwood gates, and under the arches of the zaguán to park in the court. Those gates are ten feet high and nine feet wide, one having a pedestrian door set in. They swing easily on ballbearings inside massive BY BERNICE COSULICH WITH PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHUCK ABBOTT

FEBRUARY, 1942

through a door from the hall, which permits supplies of food and ice to pass from kitchen to bar without guests being aware of servants coming or going. Wall seats on two sides of the room have great, blue leather cushions in contrast to red tiled floor, red leather-topped bamboo bar stools and red lacquered tables. Shipboard menu covers from a trip to Honolulu have been framed and hang on the walls.

The pantry and kitchen are very modern. Floors are covered with asphalt tile, there are capacious cupboards, ample drainboards and serving tables, a stove under a tiled hood and flanked by metal cabinets, and the off-white of these and the refrigerator matched in wall and woodwork trim. The service entrance is from the parking lot.

The central rooms of the house burst dramatically upon the visitor. The two great rooms cover a space 36 feet square. The division between living and dining rooms is provided by an immense fireplace. folding doors hinged for easy movement and heavy drapes that hide the doors if one wishes.

That central fireplace was designed by Mr. Hall as a setting for the portrait of Mr. Bell's maternal grandfather, William Louis Clause, one of the developers and for many years chairman of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. Mr. Bell's uncle, Robert Clause, is now president of the company.

That fireplace is fashioned to serve both rooms. Iron doors may be opened on the dining room side and the fire enjoyed from either side. The hearth opening is six and a half feet wide, requiring overlong logs which rest on modernistic, copper andirons, and it is four feet high. On the living room side, above the hearth, is a plaster hood and mantel with the recess for the painting and a graduated chimney line. On the dining room side is a smaller, more informal mantel designed as a setting for a Guaymas swordfish-as yet uncaught by Mr. Bell.

There is a sense of great space in the living room whether or not the folding doors are open or closed. Opened, the space lets light stream through from the dining room; closed, the twelve-foot panelled doors accent the room's Spanish quality. The beamed ceiling is 14 feet above. The desert is ever a part of this room, not only because of the views framed by the grilled windows, but also because of a great mural that fills the wall space across from the fireplace.

Decorative colors and furniture emphasize the room's height and its size. The furniture was especially made, oversized and massive, but diminished by the size of the room. Davenports and chairs are covered with buff Lapan cloth on which are red cushions and incidental chairs are upholstered in a blue-gray brocade with a dash of the same red. These colors are in window and door drapes. Coffee and end tables, as well as other pieces of furniture for the room, are of blond, satin-finished oak and the over-all rug is of shaggy gray-buff.

(Continued on Page Thirty-nine)