Introduction
Cliff May (1909–1989) was an architect practicing in California best known and remembered for developing the suburban Post-war "dream home" (California Ranch House), and the Mid-century Modern.
Projects and the Ranch-style house
May grew up in San Diego, California. He built Monterey-style furniture as a young man. As a residential/building designer, May designed projects throughout Southern California, including the regions around San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, California. He is credited with creating the California Ranch-style house in 1932. He never had the need to formally register as a licensed architect.
May, over the course of his career, designed numerous commercial buildings, over a thousand custom residences, and from model house prototypes more than eighteen thousand tract houses had his imprint. May synthesized Spanish Colonial Revival architecture with abstracted California adobe ranchos and Modern architecture. Robert Mondavi chose May to design his winery in which he incorporated features found in construction of California Missions.
May died in 1989, at the age of eighty, at his estate "Mandalay" in Sullivan Canyon, in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.