Hume Castle in Berkeley, California

note: article updated with new image & details

2900 Buena Vista Way in Berkeley, California is home to a rather unique property, one which many local residents don’t even know about given its location on a hillside high above street level and the fact that it’s almost completely shrouded in olive and pine trees.

Originally built in 1927 for Samuel James Hume and Portia Bell Hume – the former professor of theater arts at the University of California and the latter a pioneer in the field of community psychiatry – Hume Cloister was designed by John Hudson Thomas based on a very specific 13th-century Augustinian monastery in Toulouse, France.

I’ll try to get some pictures from the inside – maybe the owners have a few photos they wouldn’t mind sharing with us. All I know is that the interior details are pretty incredible – enormous wrought iron chandeliers, a deep wishing well, a beautiful cloister, spiraling stone staircases. It sounds terrific!

There aren’t many images of the house available online, and not many other textual references either; this fellow lived in the area and writes a bit on it, and includes some maps and pictures; the home sits on a tract of land known as La Loma Park; finally, Hume may have been involved in this staging of Henry VI, which took place on the property. I’ll post contemporary pictures if I can find some!