He Only Built One Home—So They Gave It a Singular Renovation

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.