4 generations have celebrated holidays at this Oregon family’s midcentury beach house
For four generations, a timeless midcentury modern house on Oregon’s central coast has been the holiday gathering spot for the family of environmental philanthropists John and Betty Gray.Vintage photos neatly sorted into photo albums show the Grays’ adult children and their spouses working at Formica counters preparing Christmas and Hanukkah meals. “Cooks in the kitchen,” John Gray wrote on the album page.Another photograph captures family members relaxing near the Christmas tree, with kids and wrapping paper on the living room carpet. Gray captioned this scene “utter chaos.” And a 50th wedding anniversary portrait of the late John and Betty, taken in 1995 as they posed in front of a stone fireplace wall at the beach house, has Gray’s remark that they celebrated weeks early, “at Christmas, when all were there.”While John and Betty had a year-round house south of Portland as well as residences at recreational resorts he developed, including Sunriver near Bend, John considered the discreet dwelling in Gleneden Beach his family’s “homestead.”Windows in the two-story house frame the natural landscape, but the furniture intentionally faces away from the view.Kristin Walrod, who married John and Betty Gray’s oldest grandson, Nick Walrod, 27 years ago at the beach house, said the focus here is on family.She said the 61-year-old beach house, still in near-original condition, and passed on to John and Betty’s children, has been “a continuously loved family haven.” John and Betty, both raised in Oregon, had five children and 12 grandchildren. There are now 13 great-grandkids between the ages of 2 and 23, with one more expected in January.“We used to have a combined family Christmas here every other year,” Kristin said, while standing in the kitchen and looking at the expandable dining table. “But now our family branches are so big, families rotate through the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.” In November, Kristin and Nick, who live in Portland and have three children, hosted a holiday party at the beach house for more than 60 friends and neighbors. The wood-burning fireplace in the living room was glowing, and guests who wandered out to the glass-walled sunporch were warmed by the fire pit; some continued to the stone terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The five-bedroom home can feel cozy or expansive, said Kristin, a fiction writer and educator who sometimes uses the place as a quiet writing retreat.The family’s beach house “can handle a big group with lots of energy, but it doesn’t feel echo-y when there’s just one or two people,” she said. “The home adapts. It always feels just right.”Respect for the landJohn and Betty Gray's grandson Gray Hoffman took this photo of his wife, Maddie West, and their son, Louie, 2, on the same beach where a photo of Hoffman was taken 30 years ago.Gray HoffmanJohn Gray said his modest rural upbringing in Oregon instilled in him a respect for the environment. Later in life, his recreational resort developments were purposefully designed to preserve much of the natural landscape.In the 1960s, he developed the residential and resort communities Salishan Coastal Lodge and Resort in Gleneden Beach between the Pacific Ocean and Siletz Bay and Sunriver Resort south of Bend in central Oregon.In the 1990s, he was a leading force in developing the Skamania Lodge on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. Gray also guided the redevelopment of Southwest Portland’s industrial riverfront in the 1970s at John’s Landing, named for the B.P. John Furniture Co. He said he and his family saw the area as a gateway to downtown Portland that should not have empty warehouses, but be an inviting residential and commercial district.In a 1969 Sports Illustrated interview, Gray said he was determined “to create a commercial enterprise that blends into the environment without insult.” The magazine called Gray “Oregon’s visionary land lover.” Before he became a developer, Gray started working for chipper chain inventor Joseph Buford Cox at the Oregon Saw Chain Manufacturing Corporation in 1948, after serving in the U.S. Army. Later, as president, Gray grew the company that is now the brand Oregon Tool, a global leader in wood cutting tools and other equipment.In 1984, he sold the business that revolutionized the timber industry.It is only fitting that homes in his resort developments, like the family’s beach house, were designed in the Northwest modern style and constructed of local timber like fir and cedar and other materials that blend into the landscape.Land leases at Salishan require homeowners to maintain the setting and “enhance the scenic values of a location unusually blessed with natural beauty.” Early champions of the Northwest modern style, architects Pietro Belluschi, John Yeon and Van Evera Bailey, used stone from the Cascade mountains and river rock, and glass panels to bring the outdoors inside.The Grays hired Portland-born Bailey to design their 1949 Lake Oswego house on land Betty’s parents gifted them as newlyweds. In 1956, Bailey designed the couple’s second home in Dunthorpe, where the family lived for 23 years. And in 1964, Bailey designed the beach house. The preservation organization Restore Oregon said Bailey created highly livable and unpretentious homes focused on the placement of the structure on the site, the view from the house and an emphasis on gathering spaces.Bailey’s design for the beach house followed the natural contours of the landscape. Plate-glass panels secured in wood frames rise from the floor to vaulted ceilings with exposed oak beams. The living room, which Bailey saw as the social center of the home, is positioned beyond the entrance, kitchen and dining area, and against a backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. The primary bedroom and the so-called “honeymoon suite” are on the main level. The staircase to the second story can be closed off by hall doors that match the amber-colored hemlock on the walls. For larger gatherings, the family opens the doors, transforming the upstairs rumpus room’s kitchenette into a beverage station and the downstairs laundry into a coat room.Traditionally, the second story is used as the kids’ space. There are three bedrooms. A long bunk room has four single beds on the floor and above them, four cantilevering beds anchored to a wall. Each bed has a reading light and built-in closet. In 1964, a Sunset magazine photographer captured images of the bunk room as well as the hidden spiral staircase that connects the kids’ top floor to the lower-level laundry room exit. For three generations, John and Betty Gray’s children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren have stepped down the secret staircase. Once outside, they pass a rope swing that seems always to have been there. They move by native hemlock and spruce trees and coastal shrubs that provide a natural privacy screen, and eventually they take a path to the shore. One 30-year-old family photo shows grandson Gray Hoffman as a second-grader, hands on hips, feet in the water and facing down oncoming waves. John Gray captioned this photo in his album simply: “Gray in the surf on a sunny Christmas Day.”Hoffman, now 37, has a photo of his son, Louie, who will soon be 3, in the same spot.To Hoffman, the beach house is “the only physical location that has been consistent in my life.” The home is not only nostalgic to him, but he and his wife, Maddie West, have celebrated every other Thanksgiving at the long dining table with their friends.The house, he said, is ”a fun combination of time with family, but also making our own traditions."Preserving the houseMidcentury beach houseThe front of the beach house has inch-thick cedar siding that has weathered to a natural silver-gray patina and is shrouded by trees. “It is unassuming and humble,” Kristin Walrod said, “which was very much John and Betty’s personality.” Natural landscaping and native trees in the back of the lot allow the house to be inconspicuous to people strolling along on the sand. Kristin said this was another founding principle of the design of the house and the entire Salishan community. Broad, extended roof overhangs, which are another feature of modern design, shade interiors from summer sun, protect outdoor spaces from rain and create an indoor-outdoor connection. Inside, original midcentury furnishings retain their sleek appeal. George Nelson Saucer Bubble pendants dangle from angled ceilings clad in rough fir planks. Two iconic Eames lounge chairs with molded wood shells and matching black-cushioned ottomans are in the living room. Minimalistic Scandinavian stained-wood chairs along with two sofas provide more seating.A large handmade drum is used as a coffee table; smaller drums are end tables.“Kids love to beat on the drums,” said Kristin. The drum tops are also used as surfaces to play board and card games.John Manca of Blue Mountain Contractors in Gleneden Beach worked with John Gray for more than two decades to make repairs or improvements to the beach house while preserving original materials.The house is a timeless, simple design, Manca said. “John and Betty were very understated people. It wasn’t about making something flashy; they liked subtle.”Together, John Gray and Manca designed a small dwelling where John Gray lived after Betty’s death in 2003 at age 81. John gave the beach house to his children. A short walking bridge links the two dwellings.The exterior front door to the small house was carved by renowned Oregon wood sculptor Leroy Setziol. He also created elegant door panels from black walnut for the Salishan Lodge. Manca remembers once discussing construction details about the small house with John Gray, who was surrounded by his grandchildren. “I was impressed because I thought, you know, he’s a powerful person and yet here, he’s grandpa, and the kids are running around wanting attention for this or that.“I admired that,” said Manca. “John was a real quiet person and he and Betty were quite a couple.”John died at age 93 in 2012.The Gray Family Foundation was founded by John and Betty, who believed time spent outdoors could improve lives and communities. The couple directed their philanthropy to environmental education programs that bring young people to the region’s forests and beaches.A page in one of the Gray family photo albums has a black-and-white photograph of John and Betty’s first home, built on land her parents gave them. Bailey was the architect of the 1,250-square-foot house. After the Grays’ third child was born, a room addition created a second bathroom and enlarged the kids’ two bedrooms.“We did a lot of the work ourselves including landscaping,” John wrote next to the photo. He described dragging a plank of wood to level the ground to grow a lawn and break up dirt clods.“Betty wove on her loom all the drapes from Oregon linen yarn,” he wrote. Betty and her mother laid out the yardage, cut it and sewed it into finished draperies, “a very time-consuming effort.” The midcentury modern house, the first one the couple shared, was shaded by towering old trees undisturbed during construction. House & Garden magazine profiled the property in its August 1952 issue. The theme: “Large living in small spaces.”
An Oregon beach house that remains virtually unchanged since 1964 has a secret staircase and bedroom with floating bunk beds.
For four generations, a timeless midcentury modern house on Oregon’s central coast has been the holiday gathering spot for the family of environmental philanthropists John and Betty Gray.
Vintage photos neatly sorted into photo albums show the Grays’ adult children and their spouses working at Formica counters preparing Christmas and Hanukkah meals. “Cooks in the kitchen,” John Gray wrote on the album page.
Another photograph captures family members relaxing near the Christmas tree, with kids and wrapping paper on the living room carpet. Gray captioned this scene “utter chaos.”
And a 50th wedding anniversary portrait of the late John and Betty, taken in 1995 as they posed in front of a stone fireplace wall at the beach house, has Gray’s remark that they celebrated weeks early, “at Christmas, when all were there.”
While John and Betty had a year-round house south of Portland as well as residences at recreational resorts he developed, including Sunriver near Bend, John considered the discreet dwelling in Gleneden Beach his family’s “homestead.”
Windows in the two-story house frame the natural landscape, but the furniture intentionally faces away from the view.
Kristin Walrod, who married John and Betty Gray’s oldest grandson, Nick Walrod, 27 years ago at the beach house, said the focus here is on family.
She said the 61-year-old beach house, still in near-original condition, and passed on to John and Betty’s children, has been “a continuously loved family haven.”
John and Betty, both raised in Oregon, had five children and 12 grandchildren. There are now 13 great-grandkids between the ages of 2 and 23, with one more expected in January.
“We used to have a combined family Christmas here every other year,” Kristin said, while standing in the kitchen and looking at the expandable dining table. “But now our family branches are so big, families rotate through the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.”
In November, Kristin and Nick, who live in Portland and have three children, hosted a holiday party at the beach house for more than 60 friends and neighbors.
The wood-burning fireplace in the living room was glowing, and guests who wandered out to the glass-walled sunporch were warmed by the fire pit; some continued to the stone terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The five-bedroom home can feel cozy or expansive, said Kristin, a fiction writer and educator who sometimes uses the place as a quiet writing retreat.
The family’s beach house “can handle a big group with lots of energy, but it doesn’t feel echo-y when there’s just one or two people,” she said. “The home adapts. It always feels just right.”
Respect for the land
John Gray said his modest rural upbringing in Oregon instilled in him a respect for the environment. Later in life, his recreational resort developments were purposefully designed to preserve much of the natural landscape.
In the 1960s, he developed the residential and resort communities Salishan Coastal Lodge and Resort in Gleneden Beach between the Pacific Ocean and Siletz Bay and Sunriver Resort south of Bend in central Oregon.
In the 1990s, he was a leading force in developing the Skamania Lodge on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge.
Gray also guided the redevelopment of Southwest Portland’s industrial riverfront in the 1970s at John’s Landing, named for the B.P. John Furniture Co. He said he and his family saw the area as a gateway to downtown Portland that should not have empty warehouses, but be an inviting residential and commercial district.
In a 1969 Sports Illustrated interview, Gray said he was determined “to create a commercial enterprise that blends into the environment without insult.” The magazine called Gray “Oregon’s visionary land lover.”
Before he became a developer, Gray started working for chipper chain inventor Joseph Buford Cox at the Oregon Saw Chain Manufacturing Corporation in 1948, after serving in the U.S. Army.
Later, as president, Gray grew the company that is now the brand Oregon Tool, a global leader in wood cutting tools and other equipment.
In 1984, he sold the business that revolutionized the timber industry.
It is only fitting that homes in his resort developments, like the family’s beach house, were designed in the Northwest modern style and constructed of local timber like fir and cedar and other materials that blend into the landscape.
Land leases at Salishan require homeowners to maintain the setting and “enhance the scenic values of a location unusually blessed with natural beauty.”
Early champions of the Northwest modern style, architects Pietro Belluschi, John Yeon and Van Evera Bailey, used stone from the Cascade mountains and river rock, and glass panels to bring the outdoors inside.
The Grays hired Portland-born Bailey to design their 1949 Lake Oswego house on land Betty’s parents gifted them as newlyweds. In 1956, Bailey designed the couple’s second home in Dunthorpe, where the family lived for 23 years. And in 1964, Bailey designed the beach house.
The preservation organization Restore Oregon said Bailey created highly livable and unpretentious homes focused on the placement of the structure on the site, the view from the house and an emphasis on gathering spaces.
Bailey’s design for the beach house followed the natural contours of the landscape. Plate-glass panels secured in wood frames rise from the floor to vaulted ceilings with exposed oak beams.
The living room, which Bailey saw as the social center of the home, is positioned beyond the entrance, kitchen and dining area, and against a backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.
The primary bedroom and the so-called “honeymoon suite” are on the main level.
The staircase to the second story can be closed off by hall doors that match the amber-colored hemlock on the walls.
For larger gatherings, the family opens the doors, transforming the upstairs rumpus room’s kitchenette into a beverage station and the downstairs laundry into a coat room.
Traditionally, the second story is used as the kids’ space. There are three bedrooms. A long bunk room has four single beds on the floor and above them, four cantilevering beds anchored to a wall. Each bed has a reading light and built-in closet.
In 1964, a Sunset magazine photographer captured images of the bunk room as well as the hidden spiral staircase that connects the kids’ top floor to the lower-level laundry room exit.
For three generations, John and Betty Gray’s children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren have stepped down the secret staircase.
Once outside, they pass a rope swing that seems always to have been there. They move by native hemlock and spruce trees and coastal shrubs that provide a natural privacy screen, and eventually they take a path to the shore.
One 30-year-old family photo shows grandson Gray Hoffman as a second-grader, hands on hips, feet in the water and facing down oncoming waves. John Gray captioned this photo in his album simply: “Gray in the surf on a sunny Christmas Day.”
Hoffman, now 37, has a photo of his son, Louie, who will soon be 3, in the same spot.
To Hoffman, the beach house is “the only physical location that has been consistent in my life.”
The home is not only nostalgic to him, but he and his wife, Maddie West, have celebrated every other Thanksgiving at the long dining table with their friends.
The house, he said, is ”a fun combination of time with family, but also making our own traditions."
Preserving the house
Midcentury beach house
The front of the beach house has inch-thick cedar siding that has weathered to a natural silver-gray patina and is shrouded by trees. “It is unassuming and humble,” Kristin Walrod said, “which was very much John and Betty’s personality.”
Natural landscaping and native trees in the back of the lot allow the house to be inconspicuous to people strolling along on the sand. Kristin said this was another founding principle of the design of the house and the entire Salishan community.
Broad, extended roof overhangs, which are another feature of modern design, shade interiors from summer sun, protect outdoor spaces from rain and create an indoor-outdoor connection.
Inside, original midcentury furnishings retain their sleek appeal. George Nelson Saucer Bubble pendants dangle from angled ceilings clad in rough fir planks.
Two iconic Eames lounge chairs with molded wood shells and matching black-cushioned ottomans are in the living room. Minimalistic Scandinavian stained-wood chairs along with two sofas provide more seating.
A large handmade drum is used as a coffee table; smaller drums are end tables.
“Kids love to beat on the drums,” said Kristin. The drum tops are also used as surfaces to play board and card games.
John Manca of Blue Mountain Contractors in Gleneden Beach worked with John Gray for more than two decades to make repairs or improvements to the beach house while preserving original materials.
The house is a timeless, simple design, Manca said. “John and Betty were very understated people. It wasn’t about making something flashy; they liked subtle.”
Together, John Gray and Manca designed a small dwelling where John Gray lived after Betty’s death in 2003 at age 81. John gave the beach house to his children. A short walking bridge links the two dwellings.
The exterior front door to the small house was carved by renowned Oregon wood sculptor Leroy Setziol. He also created elegant door panels from black walnut for the Salishan Lodge.
Manca remembers once discussing construction details about the small house with John Gray, who was surrounded by his grandchildren.
“I was impressed because I thought, you know, he’s a powerful person and yet here, he’s grandpa, and the kids are running around wanting attention for this or that.
“I admired that,” said Manca. “John was a real quiet person and he and Betty were quite a couple.”
John died at age 93 in 2012.
The Gray Family Foundation was founded by John and Betty, who believed time spent outdoors could improve lives and communities. The couple directed their philanthropy to environmental education programs that bring young people to the region’s forests and beaches.
A page in one of the Gray family photo albums has a black-and-white photograph of John and Betty’s first home, built on land her parents gave them.
Bailey was the architect of the 1,250-square-foot house. After the Grays’ third child was born, a room addition created a second bathroom and enlarged the kids’ two bedrooms.
“We did a lot of the work ourselves including landscaping,” John wrote next to the photo. He described dragging a plank of wood to level the ground to grow a lawn and break up dirt clods.
“Betty wove on her loom all the drapes from Oregon linen yarn,” he wrote. Betty and her mother laid out the yardage, cut it and sewed it into finished draperies, “a very time-consuming effort.”
The midcentury modern house, the first one the couple shared, was shaded by towering old trees undisturbed during construction. House & Garden magazine profiled the property in its August 1952 issue. The theme: “Large living in small spaces.”