Important Portland Homes: The Aubrey Watzek House

The Aubrey Watzek house is Portland’s most internationally exhibited and published house, and is at the top of many lists of Portland’s greatest homes. Designed for the lumber baron and civic patron Aubrey Watzek when architect John Yeon was just 26 years old, the Watzek House defines early work of Oregon’s only true architectural movement, the Northwest Regional style of modernism. The home is built from a collection of regional woods and northwest materials: Yeon described the design as “a sequence of revelations.”

The house is famous for it’s interior courtyards, sophisticated and playful interpretations of Venetian, English, and even Asian styles, and it’s harmony with the natural world, including the view of Mt Hood from the living room.

Yeon bought the house himself in the ’70s to prevent clumsy remodels. After his death in 1994, the house was donated to the University of Oregon, which formed the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies the following year.