In a World Tour of Midcentury Moderns, This Book Is the Final Stop

Architect Robert Marquis was born in Stuttgart and emigrated to America in 1937, settling in Los Angeles. He studied architecture at the Unversity of Southern California and co-founded a San Francisco–based practice with Claude Stoller and associate Peter Kampf in 1956. The 169 Schaefer House was, essentially, a cabin perched in the Napa Hill. The house was designed for Dr. Herwin Schaefer and his wife, and was modest in scale and plan but engaging in its design and execution. The cabin sits on the brow of a slope, accessed to the rear by a simple wooden bridge. This leads—via a barn-style sliding door—into a covered walkway that runs through the building and connects with an elevated balconied deck looking out across the undulating hills.