Touring a Rare Claremont Modernist 1965 Home & Studio by Architect James Hueter | House Tour

Claremont is a town with a lot of history. It has Claremont Colleges, which go back into the late 1800s. That is definitely responsible for an enormous amount of the charm of Claremont. Later on, I think the intellectual, artistic community that thrived and thrives here to this day. I'm Jay Dunton and we are in Claremont, California at the Huter House. The home was built in 1965 by James Huter in conjunction with the architect Everett Tozier. James Huter was a local Claremont artist and educator. He was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, but really a very strict modernist. We're in his studio now. He worked in this room for 50 years every single day. So James Huter was part of a group known as the Four Friends. They were really just an inseparable group of artists and creatives. They shared their work together. Four Friends were Harrison McIntosh, James Huter, Sam Maloof, and Carl Benjamin. The relationship between James Huter and the architect Everett Tozier is a little cloudy. Huter designed the house. Tozier is the architect of record, drew the plans, and having done more research on the architect than I have background knowledge on James Huter's creative architectural skills, it looks like there's an awful lot of Tozier in the building itself as far as the module that he used, window systems that are in other works of his. There's a lot of work that he did locally, so it's not surprising that Jim Huter used him to finalize the architecture. We bought the house from the family of James Huter. His daughters are still alive. His wife had passed, and we bought it from them once he passed. For all intents and purposes, we're the second owners of the house. He lived to be in his 90s, so the house had some suspended maintenance, as with all single-owner houses. We found this house out in Claremont. It was a ways away, but it had two things going for it that we really loved. A very interesting modernist layout and a lot of space around it, which, since we were in the middle of COVID, sounded like a really good idea. We decided to save the house and really take the long road of preservation as opposed to just the quick fix because the house really, I think, warranted it. It's an important house in the city of Claremont and its history of the arts. It's a place that really just became more and more magical as we unpacked it and spent time in it. My name is Lori Dunton, and we moved here in 2021. Came on a drive and just were taken by the architecture of Claremont. There's so many different styles, and it's quaint. There's a lot of trees. It's historic with the colleges that really kind of makes a statement and anchors Claremont really beautifully. We drove and experienced what we're already like. I love to drive around neighborhoods and look at homes and architecture. We found ourselves just exploring and went home. Jay continued to look and follow homes in the area and found this. It's just a really magical property. It's a really magical spot. You drive down a dirt road. You kind of have this beautiful entrance onto the property. The house had been empty and no one was living here, and so it was very overgrown. There was a lot of foliage everywhere. It's an acre of land, and unfortunately, we had to really trim everything because of the fire department, and that was presented to us when we bought the house. They're going to come through and walk the property. They do it every year, and they're going to tell you to trim everything up four feet and trim everything down. So they came. We were here, thankfully, and walked the property with them, and it was that moment of, we just bought the house. Do you recognize that? We're going to do the work, but can you give us some time? They were very gracious and thankful and said yes. So we have slowly, we've had to eliminate trees. Trees blew down. We lost two huge 80-foot pine trees, and we've also lost some eucalyptus just in our big storms that we've had recently. So that's been a big adjustment, but I've just really taken to it, really taken to being quiet. We're retired, so we're able to be quiet in our home. It really has given us the space to really observe the house and the property and to kind of make some decisions slowly, and it's just a total work in progress. I have rolled rocks around this property, like unbelievable. It's really fun. I enjoy it a lot, and I'm learning constantly. And we put in a pool, which is kind of a way of survival out here. You can't, I mean, you can, of course, anyone can, you can make it, but it has made it a lot nicer to have a pool and enjoy the heat, and you just get in a rhythm, too, with the heat in the summer. Winters are beautiful. It's easy. Summers, you're definitely, you get up earlier, you get your morning going, you do your chores, and then you have that, right when it starts to get hot, you start to retreat and come back in the house, and then you get to enjoy the light in the home, and you keep the heat and the sun out. The delight of the light in your house and the rooms, each room serves different purposes. And also, too, because we're in design, Jay and I, we move furniture all the time. Our friends come over and they say, like, there used to be a, wasn't there a sofa here? And we change the room to feel it, and in different seasons, what we need. In the winter, this is a colder room, then the other room is a warmer room, you know, but the heat's the way of the house. You know, you learn those little things about the house. The porch is on, it's another, it's another room in this house. We're out there all the time, every morning. We're out on the porch having our coffee. It's really a joy to have the space, to really sit in it and see it, notice the quietness of the home. It's really beautiful to be able to have that. And as we're remodeling or doing work, having new ideas about how to be in a room, you know, what it serves. We gather our friends and it's really, it really holds and entertains so nicely, with the pool, the walkway to the pool, and the being in here, and the studio space. We've entertained and opened up the studio and had, you know, 50 people. It's really nice. So as you enter the house, you begin to feel the constraint of the compression of the architecture. And as you come in, it opens up into the foyer and it gives you the full second story. And then it reduces again, more compression that takes you down into the opening of the main living room, beautiful expanse. The stucco exterior of the house, I am not sure as to whether that was the original color or not, but it is the stucco itself. So we're sticking with it for now. The color was put on right in the way that will absolutely outlast anything else. But it also sort of begs the question, do you like that color? Because you're going to live with it otherwise. The scale of the house is small. It's not a big house. It's not a fancy house in any way. It's a very interesting house. It was designed for an artist and it really is probably the best house I have lived in for hanging and displaying art. The wall sizes, the lighting, an art displayer's dream house. I can't help but think that James Huter had a lot to do with that. The preservation movement in Claremont, I believe, is robust. We have a well-run, engaged historical society. They are involved in preservations that really runs the gamut. It's not just skewed to one type of architectural style or another. Claremont is a town with history because it's had, I think, people with an intellectual bent. You ended up with houses. There's a well-developed architecture here and the city is behind it to preserve it. It doesn't mean that houses aren't getting bought and flipped and painted white or black. It all happens if you want to preserve your house. There's a really good community of people here who are interested in doing the same and we're all here to pick up a shovel and make it happen. Lori and I have been here for about five years. The work on the house has been constant. We do it in manageable bites. Most of the work has been infrastructure systems, all new electrical systems, all new plumbing, landscape work, trees. It's quite a lot of work, but it really, really is an amazingly special place. Inside the house and out and the connection between the two is lovely.