Lifestyle
Donlyn Lyndon, Last Surviving Creator of the Sea Ranch, Dies at 90
Donlyn Lyndon was a year or two out of architecture school when he and a few of his Princeton classmates set up what they called a “weekend practice” in Berkeley, Calif. They all had day jobs; Mr. Lyndon’s was teaching architecture.
It was the early 1960s, and the members of the group were, as the critic Robert Campbell put it, dropouts from Modernism, the orthodoxy of the moment. They shared a belief in a more humane and flexible architecture, one that allowed for the sensibilities of the people who would inhabit their buildings and that acknowledged the particular landscapes those buildings would inhabit.
They had been in business for only about an hour, Mr. Lyndon later joked, when they were invited to collaborate on an unusual project.
An architect turned developer named Al Boeke had envisioned a new kind of community on 5,200 acres of a former sheep ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a few hours north of San Francisco — with buildings shaped by, and in deference to, the wild, windswept landscape.
Mr. Boeke hired Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect who would later be celebrated for his work on Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco and many other urban plazas and parks; Joseph Esherick, an established Bay Area architect; and, at Mr. Halprin’s suggestion, Mr. Lyndon and his “weekend practice” partners, Charles Moore, William Turnbull Jr. and Richard Whitaker, who used their initials to name their new firm, MLTW.
The architects’ job was to design prototypes for buildings that others could follow — but they were suggestions, not prescriptions, Mr. Lyndon often said. The site was breathtaking, a sweep of meadowland that extended to the bluffs along a 10-mile stretch of coastline divided by hedgerows of half-century-old cypress trees.
It was Mr. Halprin’s radical idea to nestle some of the structures against the hedgerows and leave the meadows — in developer’s terms, the prime real estate — untouched. Mr. Esherick’s firm sketched out a clutch of diminutive, low-slung houses clad in redwood shingles with shed roofs tucked into a line of cypress.
MLTW’s assignment was to create something bolder, to show how larger structures could adapt to more exposed land; their site was a promontory with no shelter from the elements.
They designed a condominium building of 10 connected dwellings. Although it was a second-home community, their intention was to craft a kind of village, with common areas like the open meadows and other spaces that encouraged connections among neighbors.
The Sea Ranch, as the larger development would be called, was conceived, Mr. Lyndon wrote, as “a limited partnership — not a marriage — between the buildings and the land.”
He died on April 5 at his home there, his daughter Laura Lyndon said, almost two months after the death of his wife of 63 years, the artist Alice Wingwall. He was 90.
What he and his colleagues created was a stunning departure for its time: a collection of small, loft-like “houses” made from rough-hewn redwood planks, with enormous windows that framed the views, unified by a sloping shed roof to deflect the wind. It paid homage to the barns of the area with its post-and-beam construction and unpainted vertical cladding.
Though it had the unlovely name of Condominium One — they imagined other such structures would follow; they did not — what they built became an “icon of American architecture,” as the critic Paul Goldberger wrote in The New York Times in 1997, when Mr. Turnbull died. (It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.)
Condominium One had the effect of raising a finger to the glass-and-steel boxes of the Modernist canon. It became a destination for generations of architectural pilgrims, with its funky, relaxed aesthetic serving as an inspiration for a new California style that would be replicated in ski and beach houses across the country.
Herbert Muschamp, writing in The Times in 1993, when Mr. Moore died, said that the group had elevated “the form of the simple shed to architectural grandeur.”
Mr. Esherick died in 1998; Mr. Halprin, in 2009; Mr. Boeke, in 2011; and Mr. Whitaker, in 2021.
Mr. Lyndon, who became a prominent academic and author, leading the architecture departments at the University of Oregon, M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley, was the last living member of the Sea Ranch gang, a bearded elder and longtime steward of the ethos and ideals they set forth.
“They were more like a band than an office,” Kevin Keim, the director of the Charles Moore Foundation in Austin, said of the members of MLTW in an interview. “They complemented each other in all kinds of ways. They often said their design mode was to sit at a round table with only one pencil between them, and if your idea faltered, you handed it to the next guy.” (The story, he allowed, may have been apocryphal.)
Mary Griffin, an architect who studied with Mr. Lyndon at M.I.T. and went on to marry and work with Mr. Turnbull, said: “Donlyn was the intellectual. He built with words.”
Like many great bands, they soon broke up — in their case, after their initial work at the Sea Ranch was completed, in 1965. Not because of any discord, but because other opportunities beckoned. Mr. Lyndon headed to Oregon, and then Cambridge, Mass., finally returning to Berkeley in 1978.
With his former colleague Mr. Moore and another co-author, Gerald Allen, he wrote “The Place of Houses” (1974), a gentle anti-manifesto that did not prescribe one style over another. It was a plain-spoken, poetic guide to how to think about making a home — the order of rooms, the placement of windows — using examples from a Japanese teahouse, Palladian villas and, yes, the Sea Ranch, places that were touchstones for the authors and examples of shapes and spaces that made people feel good. (Mr. Lyndon loved a bay window, and nooks to curl up in.)
Some critics saw the book as a paean to nostalgia, but others praised its humanism and lack of pretense. Jane Holtz Kay of The Nation called it “a consciousness raiser for houses.” Mr. Campbell of The Boston Globe described it as “a cleareyed blast at conventional wisdom of every sort on the subject of houses.”
As Mr. Lyndon and his co-authors wrote: “Anyone who cares enough can create a house of great worth — no anointment is required. If you care enough you just do it. You bind the goods and trappings of your life together with your dreams to make a place that is uniquely your own. In doing so, you build a semblance of the world you know, adding it to the community that surrounds you.”
Donlyn Lyndon was born on Jan. 7, 1936, in Detroit. His mother, Dorothea (Zentgrebe) Lyndon, was an educator. His father, Maynard Lyndon, was an architect who chose his eldest son’s first name for its euphony with their surname, creating what Donlyn — who never answered to Don — approvingly called “a syllabic palindrome.”
Donlyn won a scholarship to Princeton, where he studied architecture, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1957 and his master’s in 1959. He met Alice Atkinson, an artist, at Berkeley; they married in 1963.
When she began to go blind in her 30s because of a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, she turned from sculpture to photography. In 1980, she changed her surname to Wingwall, inspired by the broken wing of a stone angel on a building in Rome. “I have a broken wing, too,” she said. (Mr. Lyndon embraced it: “What does Wingwall think?” was a common refrain in their household.)
The house Mr. Lyndon built for them at the Sea Ranch was decorated in her favorite colors: orange, yellow and red, the last color she was able to see.
In addition to their daughter Laura, Mr. Lyndon is survived by another daughter, Audrey Lyndon; a son, Andrew; five grandchildren; a brother, Maynard; and a sister, Jo Lyndon.
Mr. Lyndon was the author, with Mr. Moore, of “Chambers for a Memory Palace” (1994), an architectural world tour and epistolary dialogue between two lions of architecture about the design of places they loved. Mr. Lyndon’s history of the place he loved most, “The Sea Ranch: Fifty Years of Architecture, Landscape, Place and Community on the Northern California Coast,” with photos by Jim Alinder, was published in 2004 and revised in 2013.
There are now more than 1,800 houses at the Sea Ranch, at least 10 of which Mr. Lyndon had a hand in designing, though it did not exactly evolve into the environmental utopia its creators envisioned.
A design committee still reviews all new construction and landscaping, but as development has intensified, the houses have grown larger. Climate change has brought additional challenges: finding building materials that are fire-safe, and firescaping the land, particularly the hedgerows, which are dying off.
“Place, and its nurture,” Mr. Lyndon and Mr. Allen wrote in the revised edition of “The Place of Houses,” published in 2000, “remains an essential breeding ground for civic virtue. The sustenance of our democratic republic, we believe, demands it.”
Scott Simon talks with author Judy Blume at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival in May.
Tira Howard Photography./Courtesy Santa Fe International Literary Festival
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Tira Howard Photography./Courtesy Santa Fe International Literary Festival
Judy Blume is the legendary writer of books for young adults including Are You There God It’s Me Margaret, Deenie, Tiger Eyes, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Blubber.
Her last book, 2015’s In The Unlikely Event, was published more than a decade ago. Blume now spends her time reading children’s books behind the counter at her bookstore in Key West, Florida. Though she says she is done writing, her books remain beloved; her readers numerous and devoted.
Judy Blume spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival in May. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited in parts for clarity and length.
Scott Simon: How did you begin to write? What do you think made you a writer?
Judy Blume: I was a reader. And, you know, I meet so many kids and they say, “I want to be a writer when I grow up, but I don’t like to read.” And I say, “You know what? Forget being a writer.” Because I think every writer — that I know anyway — grew up a reader. And certainly that was true for me.
Simon: What was the spark that set it in motion from reading to writing, do you think?
Blume: I was married young. I had two kids young. And I was desperate for a creative outlet. I loved taking care of babies, but I needed something else and it could have been anything.
Simon: I have read that at one point in your life you made felt art pieces?
Scott Simon with Judy Blume in Santa Fe in May.
Tira Howard Photography/Courtesy Santa Fe International Literary Festival
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Tira Howard Photography/Courtesy Santa Fe International Literary Festival
Blume: Oh God, my first career. You know, I stopped because the Elmer’s glue — I’m an allergic person — started to give me funny things on the tips of my fingers. I made $300 selling those. And I bought myself a small electric typewriter. And the rest is history.
But I always had stories inside my head — when I was 9 years old. I bounced a rubber ball against the side of my house for hours. But really what was going on were stories. Fabulous stories, very melodramatic. I never told anybody. I never asked a friend, “Hey, do you have stories inside your head all the time?” Because I thought they’d think I was weird, which I might have been. So the stories were always there.
Simon: When you were writing, what was the process like for you?
Blume: Well, I kept a notebook for each book and I scribbled everything in it. Everything, everything, everything for a long time. For months.
And then on the day that I feel ready to start, well, that’s either the scariest part of writing or the best. Because, you know, when you have a good day — I mean, I had kids, and I would sit down at the dinner table and I would say, like, “You will never believe what Tony did today.” Because they’re real. They’re real to you. And you’re living with them for months, sometimes years. And you’re locked up in a little room all day with them. That’s why 50 years is enough. I was ready to come out into the world.
But I have found another career that I love dearly. I have a bookstore and I love that.
Tira Howard Photography/Courtesy Santa Fe International Literary Festival
Simon: I get the idea that you, at least for the moment, don’t miss writing right now.
Blume: I don’t miss writing but I’m very glad that I wrote. I mean, writing changed my life. But it was time to let it go. Could I have come up with more ideas and written more books? Yes. But I’m really happy that I found something else that I love to do.
Simon: Do characters ever come calling on you?
Blume: No. They know better. They’re quiet.
You know how many letters I get? “We need Judy to write a book — Margaret In Menopause.”
Margaret is always going to be 12. She’s not knocking, saying, “Let me out. I’m in menopause!”
They are what they are. They stay in the book. They stay in the book. They live for me in the book. And then I have to let them go.
Director James Burrows attends the “Will & Grace” start of production kick off event and ribbon cutting ceremony at Universal City Plaza on August 2, 2017 in Universal City, California.
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LOS ANGELES — James Burrows, who helped create volumes of laughter as director of more than a thousand episodes of such classic television comedies as “Cheers,” “Taxi,” “Friends” and “Will and Grace,” died Friday. He was 85.
His family confirmed his death in a statement to People, saying he “passed away peacefully today surrounded by his family.” No location or cause of death was provided.
Burrows spent his career behind the camera specializing in situation comedies. Few viewers recognized him or knew his name, other than to see it flash quickly on the screen in the opening credits. But they knew his work.
Burrows got his start in television relatively late at age 35 in 1974, directing episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” and “Laverne & Shirley.”
He co-created “Cheers,” directing 243 of the 273 episodes, as well as all 246 episodes of “Will and Grace.”
He also helmed multiple episodes of such hits as “Frasier,” “Friends” and “Mike & Molly,” and the pilots of “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory.”
“When I direct a television show, I try to reach that sweet spot where the best script meets the best performance and the best chemistry between performers,” Burrows wrote in his 2022 memoir “Directed by James Burrows.” “Hitting that exact moment, where these factors land in combination, results in the sweetest and most enduring laugh.”
His family said, “Burrows understood that great comedy was never simply about laughter. It was about humanity, connection, and truth. That understanding became the foundation of a career that forever changed television.
“But beyond his remarkable achievements, Burrows will be remembered for something even greater: his kindness, generosity, and unwavering belief in the people around him. He possessed a rare ability to make everyone better and was known for remembering every person he met by name, making colleagues at every level feel seen, valued, and appreciated,” the family statement said.
Born James Edward Burrows on Dec. 30, 1940, in Los Angeles, he moved to New York when he was 5 years old. He spent five years in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus until his voice started to change. He attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art.
His father was writer, director and producer Abe Burrows, whose Broadway hits included “Guys and Dolls” and “Can-Can.” The elder Burrows also mentored Larry Gelbart, future creator and producer of the TV show “M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H.”
The younger Burrows spent hours of his youth in theaters and studios watching his father work, dining with him at such famed New York haunts as Sardi’s and Gallagher’s and meeting celebrities who attended his father’s New Year’s Eve parties.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, Burrows attended the graduate program of the Yale School of Drama, where his classmates included actor-comedian Robert Klein, playwright John Guare and film director John Badham.
At Yale, he was required to take directing classes and he got hooked.
Burrows’ first sitcom experience was as Burl Ives’ dialogue coach on “O.K. Crackerby!” which was directed by his father and ran for one season on ABC in 1965.
From there, he was an assistant on “The Patty Duke Show.” He moved back to New York and worked for Broadway producers Lee Guber, Frank Ford and Shelly Gross. He first met actor Moore while working on the Broadway production of “Holly Golightly,” an adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that was directed by his father.
Burrows eventually worked as a stage manager for various road productions, where he met such actors as Hugh O’Brien, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Julie Harris.
By 1974, after working in dinner theater and summer stock, he turned on his television and saw Moore’s eponymous TV show. He wrote her a letter asking if there was any opening “small or smaller” at her production company that he could fill, according to his memoir.
Moore’s husband and business partner, Grant Tinker, invited Burrows to Los Angeles to direct an episode of the comedy. He apprenticed for MTM Enterprises, which had four sitcoms on the air at the same time.
Burrows cited his theater background for learning how to give actors direction and block out scenes. He’s credited for being one of the first sitcom directors to increase the typical multi-camera television shoot from three to four cameras.
The common thread between Burrows’ shows were the bonds between friends and unrelated families, whether it was the motley crew of regulars meeting at the bar in “Cheers” or the drivers working toward a better life in “Taxi” or the 20-somethings sharing the same apartment building in “Friends.”
“The best sitcoms transcend the screen and reach out and grab the audience by the throat and by the heart,” Burrows wrote in his memoir.
He relished discovering new acting talent while directing more than 75 pilots that were picked up as series.
“Having directed over a thousand shows means that almost any night you can turn on your television or go online and find a show that I directed. I’m very proud of that,” he wrote in his memoir.
In 2019, Burrows was an executive producer on live productions of “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” with famous actors re-creating episodes of those 1970s comedies.
Burrows was married in 1997 to Debbie Easton, whom he met when she worked as a hairstylist on “Frasier.” Daughters Kat Schatzow, Ellie Gluck and Maggie Burrows, who followed her father into directing, are from his first marriage to Linda Solomon, who died in 2004. His stepdaughter Paris is from his wife’s previous marriage. He has a sister, Laurie Burrows Grad, and seven grandchildren.
GOLETA — For a few minutes, the atmosphere inside Captain Fatty’s Brewery in Santa Barbara County was quiet, different from the usual Friday night clamor.
On this late May evening, the 15 men gathered there were contemplating tackling something few had previously had the courage or skill to take on. Austin Nieves, a recent transplant to the area and the man who had brought this brave group together, broke the strained silence by handing out beers.
Within minutes, the men, who ranged in age from 30 to 60, began chatting among themselves.
Then they started braiding hair.
The May 22 event — Goleta’s version of the viral U.K.-inspired “Pints and Ponytails” night — was sold out. The idea is to have expert hairstylists train uninitiated or intimidated fathers on how to comb and braid their kids’ hair, using salon-type head mannequins but in a setting for bros.
“When the first guys got there, they were stiff,” said Nieves, a Pasadena native who moved to Santa Barbara in April 2025. “Then after that first beer, they went from sitting around the edge of the bar to jumping right into learning and giving it a shot.”
Dads group members Dan Ucko, left, and Eric Schalla participate in the hairstyling event at Captain Fatty’s Brewery in Goleta.
The gathering was one of several father functions by the Santa Barbara Dads group, which Nieves founded last spring.
May’s papa party offered, along with the suds, a learning experience and camaraderie among fathers, which Nieves believes is much needed.
“When my wife had our son, she immediately became part of at least five mom groups and classes that offered her help, advice, friendship and training,” Nieves said. “As a first-time father, I really only had my brothers, who had children themselves, to turn to.”
Scientific studies have shown that as fathers have taken a more active role in child rearing, they’ve faced loneliness, doubt and confusion.
Researchers Chris Knoester and David J. Eggebeen wrote in 2006 in the “Journal of Family Issues” that fatherhood leads “to declines in feelings of well-being and participation in social activities” as fathers spend less time with friends.
Clinical psychologists Hillary Halpern and Maureen Perry-Jenkins documented that the transition from single life to fatherhood is often accompanied by a roller coaster of emotions. And researchers from Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute determined in a 2021 study that fathers might require help “during their transition to fatherhood.”
Eric Drachman, of Santa Barbara, center, pays close attention as hair stylist Chi Jou Lin, left, teaches a group of dads how to style their daughters’ hair.
A detail of one of the mannequin heads.
One such way to assist men is specifically a fathers group, according to the 2021 study.
Most men “were mostly satisfied with participating in father groups and described that they positively impacted their relationship with their partner and child.”
The increased contact also helped improve “their self-confidence and family equality and decreased their loneliness.”
Nieves agreed that his leisure time and focus changed sharply after the birth of his child, Hudson, now 3 years old, as did his friend group updates.
“They were talking about all this crazy fun or TV shows and I was talking about my son being able to lift his head,” Nieves said. “That’s when I knew I had to branch out.”
Nieves, then living in Costa Mesa with his wife, Katie, created the Orange County Dads club in October 2023.
Scientific studies have shown that as fathers have taken a more active role in child rearing, they’ve faced loneliness, doubt and confusion.
His group of merry men held meetups at coffee shops, beer halls and the zoo, hosted holiday hootenannies and even offered CPR classes.
Its success helped spawn a chapter in the Whittier area.
Though strictly a fathers club, the group, Nieves said, has grown thanks to wives and partners sharing his social media posts with their husbands.
Mikhail Alfon, founder of Blue Light Media, a social media strategy agency, took his son, Santos, to multiple Orange County meetups.
“This is our first child and obviously life changes a lot,” said Alfon in a social media post. “Finding peers and friends that are in the same stage of life is great.”
That sense of community, however, faced a challenge as Nieves and his family purchased a home in Santa Barbara and moved in April 2025.
Peter Aguilar, left, and Fredy Medel work on their technique. Medel’s partner, Daniela Fajardo, holding their 1-year-old daughter, Faylani, records the event.
Within a month, however, he had established a Santa Barbara-based dads group. Their first meetup was in May 2025, and they’ve made a point to gather once a month.
Austin Jones, a Santa Barbara-based real estate agent and investor, found Nieves through Instagram.
“I’m a husband, a dad and businessman, and it ends up being a lot of hats but very little support, at times,” Jones said. “It’s nice to find people in the trenches with you.”
Jones was intrigued by Pints and Ponytails as he’s battled the hair-care needs of his 2 ½-year-old daughter, Noa, and her textured, curly locks.
In a short while, Jones had gained enough confidence in whipping his mannequin’s hair into a ponytail that he vowed to try with his daughter soon.
“I was only pretty good at putting on a headband before this,” he quipped.
The six mannequin heads and the hour of instruction came courtesy of Santa Barbara cosmetologist Chi Jou “Belle” Lin, who offers area mobile services.
“I saw the social media post and a lot of people reached out to me to teach the class,” Lin said. “I had to help.”
Lin said the mannequins she brought varied in hair length and type, from straight to coily, but also fine in texture, as she tried to replicate young children’s hair.
A pint of beer, hairstyling tools and sprays.
She also taught the fathers basic hair-care techniques, including shampooing, detangling, checking for lice and how to tie ponytails and braids.
Even if they started out reticent, the fathers became active participants, asking questions about creating a neat French braid, what to do about tangled ponytails and how to deal with frightened children, Lin said.
“I was really impressed with the dads and their skills and the real-life questions,” said the stylist, who has personal experience at home in her 2 ½-year-old daughter, Lotus. “Not all men have the courage to ask questions.”
For Nieves, the secret in gaining new dads and retaining others is simplicity.
“If you open the door, the fathers will follow because everyone can use some help,” Nieves said. “But they just need to know it exists and they’re not alone.”
Dads Gabriel Sandoval, left, Jose Guerrero and David Talavera toast one another at the May 22 Santa Barbara County Dads’ “Pints and Ponytails” event in Goleta.
Days after the Goleta get-together, Santa Barbara dad Eric Drachman became a celebrity at the preschool of his daughter, Noa, who is soon to be 3.
“When the videos of the event were posted, the teachers at the school recognized me,” Drachman said. “They would ask my daughter, ‘Who did your hair?’”
The query that means most, however, is when Noa asks her father to fix her hair.
“She asks occasionally,” he said. “It‘s such a fun dynamic we have.”
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