Step Inside Tor House, the Coastal Home of a Historic California Poet and His Family
Robinson Jeffers took the 1919 construction of his Carmel, California, cottage more seriously than most. After the rising poet commissioned the dwelling for himself and his young family, he secured an apprenticeship with the project’s stonemason. Jeffers helped haul granite hunks up from the coastline below the craggy site, learned how to place and mortar the stones, and became so skilled at the work that he later built several other stone structures on the windswept property himself.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
Robinson Jeffers built Hawk Tower, the roughly 40-foot-tall granite structure shown above at left, completing it in 1925. Tor House (1919) is shown above at right.
During the four-plus decades he lived in the home—which he and his wife, Una, called Tor House after a centuries-old word for a rocky hilltop—he also became one of the nation’s most famous poets. Much of his long-form and short-form verse focused on the wildness and beauty of nature, and he thought deeply about the impact of humans on natural environments. Friends such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams frequently visited Tor House, which was purchased by the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation in 1979 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2024.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
The Jefferses used their collections of silver and Jugtown pottery when entertaining guests such as George Gershwin, Langston Hughes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
Photos of the couple’s twin sons, Donnan and Garth, on a windowsill inside Hawk Tower.
Robinson Jeffers’s intense poetry and his handmade house informed each other in almost mystical ways. “His poetic voice sprang from stone masonry,” says Eric Smith, president of the Tor House Foundation, which operates the property and gives weekly, docent-led tours.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
Granite walls and a corner fireplace anchor the Dining Room, built in 1931. The spinning wheel at the window was a gift from Una Jeffers’s mother, and a Northern California craftsman made the oak dining table and benches.
An excerpt from the Jeffers poem "The Old Stone-Mason," published by Random House in Hungerfield and Other Poems (1954), reads:
[...] And hear at night the huge waves, my drunken quarrymen
Climbing the cliff, hewing out more stones for me
To make my house. The old granite stones, those are my
people;
Hard heads and stiff wits but faithful, not fools, not
chatterers;
And the place where they stand to-day they will stand also
to-morrow.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
Musical instruments played by Una Jeffers, an accomplished pianist, included a melodeon in the Dining Room
photo by: Leslie Williamson
Tor House contains many representations of her favorite mythical creature, the unicorn.
The National Trust holds a perpetual preservation easement on the site to ensure its protection. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the United States, Preservation is highlighting this decidedly original American poet and the place he and his family created. We commissioned Northern California photographer Leslie Williamson to capture Tor House’s rough-hewn yet refined character.
photo by: Leslie Williamson
A 1904 Steinway grand piano and another melodeon in the cottage’s Living Room have both been restored. This space overlooks Carmel Bay.
Williamson's photos showcase how natural materials and the Jefferses' furnishings combine to infuse the house, inspired by a 16th-century barn Una Jeffers saw on a trip to England, with a 20th-century California sensibility.
See the print edition for more photos of the property, including our Summer issue cover. And for more on Robinson Jeffers and Tor House, check out our back page.
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