Yamada Residence Designated as Historic Resource
The San Diego, CA, home of pioneering landscape architect Joseph (Joe) Yamada and his civic activist wife Elizabeth (Liz) was designated a “historic resource” by the San Diego Historical Resources Board (HRB) in a unanimous vote on November 17, 2022. Joe, subject of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s (TCLF) 2013 Pioneers Oral History, and Liz, had lived in the home from 1973 until their deaths within in days of each other in May 2020. The Yamadas, who met as children in a Japanese internment camp, were married for 66 years.
As reported in the La Jolla Light, the designation came before the HRB in September 2022 meeting, but was found lacking. “HRB trustee Ann Woods said: ‘I find it ironic that we are designating the home of a landscape architect and there are no landscape components in the designation …Aren’t there components that should be included?’” The historic designation application, supported by the home’s current owners, Troy Wu and Insun Lee, and prepared by IS Architecture, was updated to include “the front yard landscape and all other contributing landscape features identified by the consultant."
“Benefits of historic designation,” according to the La Jolla Light, “include availability of the Mills Act program for reduced property tax for owners to help maintain, restore and rehabilitate historic properties; use of the more flexible Historical Building Code; use of the historical conditional use permit, which allows flexibility of use; programs that vary depending on site conditions and the owner’s objectives; and flexibility in other regulatory requirements. However, houses cannot be modified significantly once they are designated historic.”
The historic designation of homes and designed landscapes of landscape architects is far from common, unlike that of homes by architects, which makes the Yamada residence’s designation even more important and builds a body of precedents for the legacy of other landscape architects.
The Yamadas’ respective work in landscape architecture and activism earned the home justification for designation under the HRB’s Criterion A, “a property exemplifying or reflecting special elements of the city’s, a community’s, or a neighborhood’s historical, archaeological, cultural, social, economic, political, aesthetic, engineering, landscaping or architectural development”; Criterion B, “a property identified with people or events significant in local, state, or national history”; Criterion C, “a property embodying distinctive characteristics of a style, type, period, or method of construction or a valuable example of the use of natural materials or craftsmanship”; and Criterion D, “ a property representative of the notable work of a master builder, designer, architect, engineer, landscape architect, interior designer, artist, or craftsman.”
About Joe and Liz Yamada
Joe Yamada’s landscape architecture career began in his study at Berkeley, where his design philosophy was shaped by Modernist instructors Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo, and Lawrence Halprin, among others. After graduating in 1954, Yamada joined the San Diego office of Harriet B. Wimmer, the city’s first woman landscape architect in commercial practice. Yamada became a partner in 1960 and retained the firm name Wimmer Yamada & Associates even after Wimmer’s death in 1980. Yamada designed numerous landmark sites in the San Diego region, including Sea World, Embarcadero Marina Park, and the University of California, San Diego. The Yamadas moved into their home in La Jolla, designed by Liz’s architect brother David Kikuchi, in an era when discrimination largely excluded Black, Jewish, and Asian American families from settling in the area. Their home proudly exhibits their heritage, with a landscape designed by Yamada in the style of a Japanese strolling garden.
Liz, the first Asian American teacher at San Diego High School and later a partner in her husband’s landscape architecture practice, worked for decades with organizations like the Japanese American Citizens League to preserve the memory of the chapter of history that she and her husband had survived together. While at the Poston Internment Camp as a young person, she had corresponded with San Diego librarian Clara Breed, who sent packages of books and other supplies to the children in the camps. Breed had saved her collection of letters from the camp’s children, including Yamada, and reached out to her decades later for help preserving them. Yamada donated the letters to the collection of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where they remain.
The current owners of the Yamada’s former residence applied for designation in hopes of safeguarding the property’s integrity and honoring the lives and work of its previous owners. Consistent with the Board’s naming convention, the home will be known henceforth as the Joseph and Elizabeth Yamada House.https://www.tclf.org/places/city-and-regional-guides/st-louis-and-misso…
