Grounds for elegance: an outdoor space for a grand Victorian

Pool & Spa News, April 9, 2004 by Leslie Ensor

The grand 1906 Queen Anne Victorian had glorious views of Mount Tamalpais, but its more intimate landscape was no match for the mansion's elegance. So the owners turned to architect Elida Doldan Schujman, who renovated a historical summerhouse on the site, and landscape architect Richard A. Vignolo for a master plan that would transform their overgrown, 3.5-acre hillside site into a sophisticated outdoor environment.

The centerpiece of the plan is a pool complex designed by Schujman that provides everything necessary for Marin County, Calif.'s, outdoor good life. Linked to the house by formal, terraced steps, the pool is on axis with the home's entry and provides a dramatic view from the large bay windows opposite the front door. While the symmetrical relationship with the house gives the landscape a period feeling, it meant the builder would face some difficult site conditions.

That was just fine with Sal Versaggi, a general building and engineering contractor with a specialty in concrete. "My niche is anything other contractors won't do," he says. In this case, he had to cut through rock in the upper half of the site and fill the lower half to make a level pad for the pool and deck. After removing 27 eucalyptus trees, Versaggi drilled and poured deep piers into the hillside. They support concrete retaining walls that areas tall as 11 feet in places. Next he brought in engineered fill, laid down and compacted in 6-inch layers to bring the soil to 98 percent compaction, tested on site by a soils engineer. Then he began to dig the hole for the pool. The Gunite pool, suspended on piers, is structurally integral to the retaining walls. Versaggi says for safety reasons he will never agree to build a pool unless it has a cover, as this one does.

Versaggi built all the project's hardscape and the two pool pavilions. Designed to harmonize with the Queen Anne Victorian architecture of the main house, the pavilions contain a bathhouse and a kitchen. There's also an outdoor kitchen and dining area next to the spa at the north end of the pool. Schujman designed an operable fountain behind the spa that will trickle cool water should anyone feel too warm while relaxing in the spa's heated water.