The Sea Ranch Master Planner’s Home Is On The Market For $8M

A quintessential Sea Ranch property has just hit the market for $8 million. 

It’s the highest asking price of any property to date at The Sea Ranch, a community known for its minimalist architecture built in sync with the natural surroundings. At 5.1 acres, it’s also the largest property in the 10-mile span of homes on the Northern California coast.

But what really makes this two-bedroom, two-bath, 2,121-square-foot12 home special is its provenance: it was a second home to Sea Ranch master planner Lawrence Halprin and his family for more than 40 years. Halprin began the project in the early ‘60s when a group of idealistic architects from the University of California at Berkeley got together to create what they saw as a modern, minimalist development that would “live light on the land.” Homeowners would respect the ecology of the area, and neighbors would respect each other, keeping trash cans and cars out of sight, sharing community centers, and landscaping with only native plants—no flower beds, no lawns.

To this day, The Sea Ranch Association keeps that original vision alive, and the Halprin home is a perfect example of its success.

“It’s such a unique, magical piece of property,” said realtor Marianne Harder, one of the property’s listing agents with Liisberg and Company. Harder herself has lived at Sea Ranch since 1984—so not only is she your contact for purchasing this home, but she knows pretty much everything you might want to know about the area.

Like all Sea Ranch properties, the unpainted (only select stains are allowed by the association) wood exterior is minimal and stands in harmony with the wild surroundings. Slanted roofs echo the angular, wind-worn coastal cliffs and bishop pines. 

Inside, the home is much like as previous owners left it.

“We tried to preserve everything in keeping with the way the Halprins lived in the home,” Harder said. The Halprins’ own rugs, window seats, pillows, and several Pomo Indian pieces decorate the home for showing.

Halprin passed away in 2009 at 93, and his wife Anna, a professional dancer, passed away in May at the age of 100, despite a bout of breast cancer in the 80s. She was inspired by her illness and healing process to use dance and creative movement to help terminally ill patients. Anna and her daughter, Daria, co-founded the Tamalpa Institute, which still operates in Marin County.

Larry was a prolific landscape architect who created iconic outdoor spaces including Levi’s Plaza in San Francisco, The Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial in Washington, D.C., the approach to Yosemite National Park, and Stern Grove in San Francisco among many others.

His studio, a separate 20 x 20 x 20 (dimensions that duplicated his San Francisco workspace, which he loved) building erected in 1979, remains untouched with his sketches still pinned to the wall. Hundreds of pinholes peppering the interior walls are evidence of decades of creative projects. 

That the walls could accommodate pushpins is a digression from typical Sea Ranch building protocol, which caused a bit of a rift between Halprin and Sea Ranch builder Matt Sylvia. But Halprin insisted.

“The sheetrock proved to be the cause of one of the few major arguments I had with Matt,” Halprin writes in a 2003 essay. “He felt it would be too impermanent and saw no reason to wary from wood. I finally won him over, on the basis that the sheetrock’s white color would constantly reflect the varying colors of nature from day to day and season to season. Indeed, watching the incredible wonderful and subtle color variations of the studio interior over time has been one of my great enjoyments in working here.”

When they weren’t working, the family climbed down to the cove below where they fished and dove for abalone.

Approaching the home, you can enter through the front door, or slide open an adjacent barn door which reveals truly breathtaking views of the rugged Pacifica coast protected by the bishop pines that attracted the Halprins to this particular site at The Sea Ranch. 

Above the barn door is a catwalk that divides the two portions of the home. The southern rooms consist of the Halprins’ living room, kitchen, dining room and bedroom. Much of the home has been left intact—the living room rug was the Halprin’s own, as was the carved wood coffee table. A sunroom serves as the dining room.

The northern-situated portion of the home features a second bedroom and study. A simple outdoor kitchen was used to clean and cook the day’s catch, and a seating area constructed of driftwood served as an amphitheater where family, as well as Anna Halprin’s modern dance troupe gathered and performed. A found burl redwood slab is both a bench and a planter for succulents. 

Making the property even more attractive is the fact that The Sea Ranch Department of Design, Compliance & Environmental Management has approved subdividing the land into three parcels if the new owners should wish to do so.

Currently, neither the main house nor the studio are bound to the Bane Bill, which states that California coastal properties must not exceed 2,200 square feet—in other words, buyers are welcome to expand the existing structures. However, if the land is subdivided, it would then become subject to Bane Bill restrictions.

And while you’d never know it thanks to the uniform architecture throughout The Sea Ranch, the existing home is not the one the Halprin’s originally built in 1966—that house burned to the ground in 2001. The couple had driven into Marin for a doctor’s appointment and upon their return, they were greeted by firefighters at the top of their driveway. The “cabin” was gone. Within hours, Larry began sketching plans for the home they would rebuild, which they did on the same footprint as the old home, but with a different layout.

When the new structure was completed in 2003, Larry wrote: “Its bare walls, empty shelves, and open spaces are waiting to be filled. What remains the same is our incredible remarkable site with its mature trees, its views, the sound of the surf, the great rock formations, the horizon line, and the gray whales passing through on their way south to Scammons Lagoon in Baja, California.”

Now, the house once again waits to be filled, still set against that stunning natural backdrop.