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

John Ekin Dinwiddie came from a family of Bay Area builders. His father established a construction company in the wake of the San Francisco earthquake of 1911, with the business expanding at a fast rate. Dinwiddie studied architecture at the University of Michigan and worked briefly with Eliel Saarinen. He settled back in San Francisco and established his own practice in 1931. This house in Berkeley, from 1951, was a commission for the architect's sister-in-law. It sits on a prime hillside site looking out over the waters of the East Bay and across to the city of San Francisco itself.