By Martina Schimitschek
With little money and lots of optimism, three brothers from Chicago settled in Encinitas, opening an auto shop along Highway 101 just across from Swami’s Beach. It was 1947, World War II was in the past, and the United States was shifting to a peacetime economy and an era of extraordinary growth.
During those preboom years, Jack, Larry and Bob Weir, all Navy veterans, made ends meet by bartering and trading goods for their services. Auto repairs would net them squash, avocados and even an occasional bottle of whiskey. But one particularly large debt would change their lives.
Ted Berryman, a nearly weekly customer, was working on restoring the San Luis Rey Mission in Oceanside. Berryman asked the brothers if they would be interested in helping him build a house on his uncle’s land in Cardiff with adobe brick his uncle made at the site. Once the house sold, the Weir brothers would be paid.
That was the beginning of Weir Bros. Construction, as recounted by Connie Weir, Jack’s wife, in the new book “Weir Brothers Adobe Homes,” which was compiled and self-published by grandson Robert Weir. The prolific construction company would change the residential landscape in inland North County with hundreds of one-of-a-kind adobe homes.
Soon after the brothers built and sold their first adobe, they constructed six more on Cardiff’s Windsor Road. They made their own adobe bricks on the land. Larry was the designer and Jack the contractor. The simple two-bedroom homes would evolve over the years into fanciful structures with curved walls and circular rooms under Larry’s artistic vision. But by the mid ’60s, Jack, the pragmatist, and Larry, the artist, had parted ways. Larry moved to Los Angeles, and Jack would eventually go on to build large homes in Rancho Santa Fe for a client list that included one-time Chargers owner Gene Klein and quarterback Dan Fouts. (The Fouts house, built in 1987, was the last adobe home Jack built.)
Bob, the youngest of the three brothers, was the troubleshooter who worked with both brothers, but remained in Escondido with Jack after the split.
Escondido has a long history of adobe construction dating back to the California mission and ranchero eras. The Weir homes captured the essence of haciendas and infused them with midcentury and 1970s chic.
“They are funky homes. That’s what makes them cool,” Robert Weir said. “They are true to their times and place.” Weir, who lives in North County and operates a drug and alcohol treatment clinic, was inspired to compile the book after attending one of the annual Adobe Home Tours offered by the San Diego Adobe Heritage Association. (This year’s tour, originally scheduled for March, is tentatively planned for October.)
It was Weir’s first real introduction to adobe and the work of his grandfather Jack. The book is a bit of family history, San Diego County history and architectural history, he said, but it’s also a snapshot of a moment in time when building an empire out of mud bricks, starting with one house, was possible.
“The time and place felt a little more Wild West,” said Weir, who is now an aspiring adobe homeowner. Weir was about 20 when Jack died in 2009 at age 85. Weir’s father, also Robert Weir, took over the family building business, but by the 1980s, with new building regulations focusing on earthquake standards, adobe lost its appeal as a construction material.
About 200 of the Weirs’ adobe homes are still scattered about North County. Many are in Escondido, where the company was headquartered.
“By the early ’60s, Weir homes had become the gold standard for adobes,” said Tom McCoy, an Escondido native and adobe homeowner who helped establish the Adobe Home Tour in 2011. His family and the Weirs have known each other for generations.
“These guys were amazing,” McCoy said of the Weir brothers. “If anyone asked for help, they would give it.”
The brothers helped other adobe companies get started, and as a result, more adobe homes sprang up in the area. It is believed that the Escondido area has more adobe buildings than any other area in the country outside of New Mexico, McCoy said.
Larry Weir, a self-taught designer, took inspiration from Cliff May, known as the father of the California ranch house, and the practical simplicity of Frank Lloyd Wright. But Weir homes were also a nod to the romance of early California. It was the heyday of the Westerns, and homeowners wanted their own rancho. Weir homes were designed with arches, courtyards and a signature wagon wheel tucked into a wall. But many also have pools and bars.
“They built these houses for people who liked to party, and they partied with them,” Robert Weir said.
Gretchen Pelletier lives in a Weir home in south Escondido. She and her husband have been restoring the late 1950s house since they bought it in 2012.
“It’s an architectural work of art; completely unique,” Pelletier said. “I was managing editor of San Diego Home/Garden [Lifestyles magazine] in the 1980s, and my husband has been in the building trades forever. We knew about the Weir brothers and adobe homes from way back, and when this house came on the market, we both saw it online and had to check it out.”
Her house, with circular rooms and curving walls, is entirely adobe, including the interior walls. “We’re project people, and this house has provided us with plenty of those,” she said. “You become a steward of something that will outlive your time in it. It influences upgrade decisions far beyond resale value.”
Adobe is among the oldest construction materials in the world. The thick walls provide insulation that keeps the home cool during the day and warm at night. The Weirs combined the passive heating and cooling of adobe with reclaimed wood they cultivated from sources all along the Western seaboard. At the time, Robert Weir said, “they weren’t fashionable, but cost effective.”
The homes were eco-friendly before their time. “There’s no pretense,” McCoy said. “They’re just really comfortable.”
“The building material is truly fitted to the landscape, because it is of the landscape,” Weir said. “It’s kind of like a sandcastle.”
For more information about the book, visit www.weirbrosadobe.com. For details on ordering the book, email to weirbrosadobe@gmail.com or call (858) 888-5480.
martina.schimitschek@
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