Norm Applebaum, architect as friend and artist, 80 – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Some architects design monuments, even entire cities. Others build custom homes for private clients. One requires assistants, political acumen, lots of money. The other can require an extra dose of empathy and patience when dealing with finicky clients and lots of money, too.

Norm Applebaum focused on private residences.

My clients become my family, he once said. Their homes, and the architecture I create for them, are my children. They can never be duplicated, and the bond we share lasts a lifetime.

Applebaum designed and remodeled dozens of homes in more than 50 years and gave names to some of them, like Wings in Escondido and Sun Catch in Rancho Santa Fe. And unlike some architects who become frustrated with finicky clients, he befriended his clients for life.

Applebaum, a Chicago native and San Diego resident since the late 1960s, died March 25 of leukemia. He was 80.

He was a passionate guy, said his widow, Barbara Roper. He loved everything with depth.

Keith York, founder and curator of the Modern San Diego website on local architecture, said Appleton was one of those weird, unique bridges to the past to San Diegos post-World War II generation of architects who started their careers in the 1940s and 50s.

A member of the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects since 1974, Applebaum received its highest honor in 2018, the Robert Mosher Lifetime Achievement Award.

His abilities and passion as an architect, artist and master craftsman are impressive, and they are readily reflected in his work, the citation read.

Norman Martin Applebaum was born in Chicago on Dec. 28, 1939, and moved with his family five years later to Los Angeles, where his mother was a mezzo-soprano and his father, a violinist.

Norm took up the trombone and studied at the Los Angeles Music Conservatory. He played jazz with the likes of Stan Kenton, Dick Shearer and Peter Sprague.

My background as a musician strengthens my creative process, he once said, and as a jazz musician, more so, because of improvisation.

Applebaum attended the Merchandising Institute in Los Angeles and took an aptitude test at LA City College to see if he was suited to be an architect. The test didnt say so, but he ignored the results and earned an architectural degree in 1968 from Arizona State University. He soon moved to San Diego, worked for several firms before earning his architectural license and started his one-man firm in 1972.

All my homes are done artistically, Applebaum said. I dont do any development or tract work or spec work. All my individual custom homes are art.

Applebaum took his cues from Southern Californias pre-World War II architectural heritage, drawing on both its Hispanic traditions and contemporary styles.

It began in the 1930s, he told The San Diego Unions architecture critic Kay Kaiser in 1984. So we should keep using it, whatever the contemporary ideas may be.

Roper, Applebaums third wife, said contemporary styles went only so far with her husband.

He hated the downtown area with all the Vancouver-like buildings with all the balconies, she said.

Applebaum never wanted to visit the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park, home of many Old Masters, she said, because the 1960s modern building clashes with the Spanish Colonial revival buildings around it.

One of Applebaums biggest and most contemporary homes was what he called Sun Catch, the Rancho Santa Fe residence completed in 2006 for investment company executive Charles Brandes and his wife Tanya.

Among its many features are 27-inch-thick steel beams, covered in wood, that extend the roof as much as 85 feet beyond the walls and act like sun catchers.

When you start defying gravity, you create a mystique, Applebaum told a Union-Tribune interviewer at the time. (People will wonder) how did he do it.

One of Applebaums many clients who became a devoted friend was Richard Matheron, a retired U.S. ambassador to several African countries. In 1988 Applebaum designed a home he called Wings, overlooking the San Diego Zoos Safari Park, and a replacement when it was lost in the 2007 Witch Creek-Guejito Fire.

He was my best male friend over the years, Matheron said. He used to say frequently that he must have done something right if clients continue to invite him back to dinner.

Applebaum would typically interview clients about their goals for a new or remodeled home and then build intricate models out of corrugated cardboard that were works of art in themselves.

Both Kay (his late wife) and I always enjoyed the process, Matheron said. We never felt we were in a hurry.

When the first house was lost, Applebaum met the couple shortly afterward and began planning a replacement, this time with photovoltaic cells and other sustainable architectural features.

The first house had much of a zen quality, he said. This house is, in a way, more monumental. The fireplace is massive.

In recent years Applebaum joined Matheron and other buddies at the AMC Mira Mesa multiplexs live simulcasts of New York Metropolitan Opera productions. They then would walk to Mimis Cafe for lunch. Applebaum insisted that Matheron order the French pot roast.

Youll want that, Applebaum said, but Matheron judged it Frenchish not French. It became a running joke.

Roper said Applebaum did not travel in San Diego society circles, where architects sometimes find their best clients.

He was hungry for work at times but he never complained about it, she said.

Roper said Applebaum arranged to have his drawings and other works donated to the UC Santa Barbara Art, Design & Architecture Museum with more than 275 collections include papers and drawings by leading California architects.

Norm said hes in good company, she said.

Besides Roper, Applebaum is survived by his two sons, Anthony and Jeffrey, who both live in San Diego, and five grandchildren. The family requests friends make donations in his memory to the San Diego Blood Bank or a charity of their choice.

Roger Showley, a freelance writer, can be reached at rmshowley@yahoo.com and (619) 787-5714.

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Norm Applebaum, architect as friend and artist, 80 - The San Diego Union-Tribune