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By David Hanson

Carmel's Storybook Cottages

Carmel's cottage romance owes itself to the whimsical genius of Hugh Comstock, the most famous would-be architect few have ever heard of.

photography: Carmel Preservation Foundation
Hugh Comstock was neither architect nor home builder when he began constructing his storybook cottages, just imaginative and determined.

Once upon a time in a land at the edge of the world, where tall pine trees swayed with ocean breezes and a white sand beach smiled broadly at a big blue ocean, there lived a woman who made and sold dolls. She made so many of her Otsy Totsy rag dolls that she asked her husband to build a house for them. With no training in dollhouse building (or any building, for that matter) the husband dreamed up and built a teeny-tiny house with a sloping roof of hand-cut shingles and a stone chimney that wasn't quite straight. He named the house "Hansel" and his fairy tale began . . . .

This story is true and it started in 1924 when young Hugh Comstock took a trip down the California coast to the artistic enclave of Carmel. The sublime beauty of the area had been snatching up weekend visitors and making them full-time residents for decades. Especially Carmel. Though Jack London, among other authors, had camped out under its pines and built fires on its beach, the town didn't come into its own as a bonafide artist colony until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake drove some of the Bay Area's creative class to Carmel's laid-back town of fewer than 500 people.

photography: Carmel Preservation Foundation
Comstock first built the Hansel and Gretel cottages (Hansel pictured here) in 1924 to house Mayotta's doll collection. Their tiny, storybook style quickly caught on and lead to a building burst in the adjoining neighborhood.

photography: Roger Davies
The Hansel cottage today.

By the time Comstock arrived for his visit, Carmel held two things that attracted him: a conservation ethic (Ordinance No. 7 stated that no tree, shrub, or bush be cut or removed on public property) and a dollmaker named Mayotta Brown. The two married in the first year, and soon they were mixing pine needles with plaster to cover the walls of the first Comstock cottage, Hansel. Comstock was not an architect and had never built a house. He had been fascinated as a boy by the drawings of British children's book illustrator Sir Arthur Rackham. He had imagination, and he had $100 (the building cost according to town ledger).

Despite Comstock's inexperience and lack of formal training (he rarely used a carpenter's level), the house did not collapse and the storybook appeal caught on. Soon the old facades of storefronts came down and the town's small Craftsman and Victorian architecture gave way to the celebration of whimsy and fantasy that defines Carmel to this day.

photography: Roger Davies
Ober's Cottage

photography: Roger Davies

Comstock would build more. Between 1925 and 1930 he built 15 to 20 additional storybook cottages, many in clusters to the east of downtown Carmel. Though the building boom of the 1920s demanded larger homes, Comstock insisted on using native chalk rock, wood, redwood shakes, and hand-carved timber and tile.

The story doesn't end there, though the fairy tale did, for a while. The Great Depression reached even the best utopias and forced Comstock to consider more economical construction. So he transferred his inspiration from the English countryside to the Hispano-American adobe. It required only mud. Ever the innovator, Comstock devised a waterproof formula and built the first cottage with it in 1936. Rather than patenting the formula and technique, he shared the technology publicly so others could build affordable cottages with available materials.

photography: Roger Davies

More than 70 years later the story continues. Carmel has changed—more storybook for visitors than for the locals, some of whom lament the commercialization and chichi vibe brought in by more art collectors than artists. But the magic still exists down the narrow, sidewalk-less streets covered in tall pines and low cypresses that hide tiny cottages. They seem to have sprouted from the soil like bulbous mushrooms.

Michele and Richard Ruble live in Comstock's old studio, where Mayotta remained for years after her husband's death. "We had both come to Carmel, independently, in the fifties and sixties, and it was this little village with people from all walks of life," says Michele. "It was low-key and unpretentious—and very artistic. Mrs. Comstock would have been living in this house at the time."

In the late 1990s the couple, now married and retired, returned to Carmel to live. Comstock isn't very well known, so they didn't recognize the house for its designer like one might a Frank Lloyd Wright. "I just thought this house was neat and nice to be in," says Richard. "I already liked the culture of Carmel, and when I heard of Comstock, I had that much more respect for this house and its history."

Though some of Comstock's fairy-tale cottages had deteriorated in previous decades, new ownership has infused a renewed pride in the legacy.

"People comment on how great they remember the house looking," says Michele. "They'd always loved it and are grateful it has come back to life."

Thus, the fairy tale lives on, happily ever after.

photography: Roger Davies
A paneled Dutch door lends a fairy-tale quality to Ober's, the house Comstock built for himself and wife Mayotta.

More images of Carmel
Official travel site
Carmel's San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission