A Long-Forgotten John August Reed Design (The Heye House) Rediscovered in Ocean Beach, San Diego
Curation by Keith York
In late 2015 I showed a house to client on a quest to find a modestly priced mid-century modern home along the coast. While she ended up purchasing a William Kesling design, one of the homes we toured never left my mind. It made an impression on me that few homes do.
As we stepped into the home, we both recognized that beyond its description highlighting the recent remodel that included new granite countertops, cabinets, appliances and laminate flooring, there was something truly magical about its 1,200 square feet open to its small plot of land. The house sold within two months following our visit.
The home, as they all do eventually, returned to the market in February 2021 and was subject to my usual outreach of phone calls, texts and emails to clients to alert them of the potential at 2102 Mendocino Boulevard in Ocean Beach. This time around the listing agent noted that it had ‘mid-century charm’ and that the abundance of glass ‘let the outside in.’ The listing went dormant within a short time but one of my clients – who had been focused on the two Herbert Brownell Compact Houses on Agate Street in Pacific Beach that had come on the market in recent months – logged it as something to follow-up on.
In early April the house appeared again on the market, noting that it was a ‘mid-century OB gem’ this time around. Despite our submitting an aggressive offer and back-up offer the sellers engaged another buyer. As often occurs, the initial buyer cancelled their escrow following their inspections and our offer was accepted.
While in escrow I embarked on satisfying our collective curiosities as to the history of the home – that seemingly had escaped the listing agent and a series of recent owners/sellers. First I searched newspapers.com for the any mentions of the address, followed by ‘phoning a friend’.
Heather Crane embarked on her own diligent survey and found a few items of interest – the house was constructed in 1964; that it appears on a historic aerial photograph taken in 1966; and that the first time it appeared in the City Directory was 1968. The owner in 1968 was Donald R. Heye, who founded Hyspan Precision Products. Via a simple Google search it was a delightful surprise that he is still the President of the company.
I picked up the phone and was quickly dispatched to Mr. Heye by the company’s receptionist. He immediately recognized the home I was asking about. With only a newspaper real estate advertisement from 1975 describing the home as an “architect’s ski chalet”; at this moment we had little to go on.
Don and Jacqueline Heye
Donald R. Heye graduated from college in 1958. By 1959, Don and his wife, Jacqueline, were renting their first apartment on Puterbaugh south of Washington where they could look north over Washington Avenue and see Homer Delawie’s first house, nicknamed Boxcar House. They were intrigued by contemporary architecture.
The Heyes moved to the Evergreen Villa apartments at 1770 Evergreen in Point Loma – a strong example of modern architecture in its own right. Evergreen Villa at the time was managed by local realtor Betty Tate – who had just collaborated with architect John August Reed to design three homes on Macaulay Street right around the corner. Don and Jacqueline moved to 3226 Macaulay and began experiencing Reed’s architecture intimately.
Tate introduced Don & Jacqueline to John Reed and a design effort was launched – starting with John and Alana Reed selling the Heyes a parcel on nearby Mendocino Boulevard on April 15, 1963. Working at Ryan Aeronautical at this time, Don recalled Reed driving down from Los Angeles in some ‘funny old car’ throughout the process of design and construction. Don was driving an early (and fairly quirky) MG-TC roadster (the family’s second car, that Don used to drive to work at Ryan before he ‘upgraded’ to a Morgan) so ‘funny’ has a unique context.
The Heye House
The Donald & Jacqueline Heye Residence by architect John August Reed was completed by contractor George Boyd on October 24, 1963 at a reported cost of $27,500. Don recently recollected that he was in the house until 1974-75 when he sold it to a sales woman in Betty Tate’s office for $37,500. As was true in Ocean beach and nearby Point Loma, “The street was not paved the entire time we lived there. We entered from the alley – The contractor would not pour the driveway all the way to the street because it was on City property – so I did it, but ran a little short so added the railroad ties in the foreground of the car photo – my degree in aeronautical engineering didn’t include concrete construction.”
Through a succession of owners, the house was in nearly original condition in 2014 when it sold. As early as 2015 the remodeled home again became available on the market and continued along a path of a additional changes. In 2021, the new owner, our client, has already begun work in analyzing the original house for restorative work.
