Tor House and Hawk Tower

Tor House and Hawk Tower

Tor House and Hawk Tower are buildings in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, built by poet Robinson Jeffers.

Tor House

Jeffers began construction on Tor House in 1918 and with the aid of a stone mason completed it in 1919. Jeffers named it "Tor" house after type of ground on which the house was situated, a tor is a rocky outcrop. He picked the site for the house on an area of land that he said was like "prow and plunging cutwater” of a ship. The Carmel area's influence in Robinson Jeffers' work becomes apparent in his poems such his work “The Purse Seine”, a poem about the local fishing industry. He lived out the rest of his life in Tor house, while continuing to add on to it. His routine was to work on his poetry in the mornings and to work on his building projects, such as Hawk Tower and expanding Tor House, in the afternoons.

History of Tor House

Robinson Jeffers came to the coast of Carmel in 1914 with his wife Una Jeffers. They decided to remain there; Jeffers bought land and began construction on Tor House out of stones with help from a local contractor. After completion of Hawk Tower, Jeffers continued work on Tor House by adding a dining room. (Originally the house had three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and a bathroom. All of these were smaller than that of an average house due to the smaller size of Tor House.) The house was lit by conventional means until 1949 when electricity was installed.

Hawk Tower

After completing Tor House and learning the art of stonemasonry from the contractor who helped him build it, Jeffers started work on a tower that would take him four years to complete. He began construction in 1920, intending to build the tower for his wife. He named this building “Hawk Tower”, after a hawk that appeared often while he was building the tower, but stopped appearing after he finished construction.

External links

* [http://www.torhouse.org/history.htm Link to Tor House Foundation website]
* [http://carmel.com/tor-house-b266582 Link to Carmel website]
* [http://www.gesc.ttu.edu/Fac_pages/Yoshinobu/RJ/RJ_index.html TTU website on Jeffers]
* [http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Literature/Jeffers-Robinson-14621.html another Jeffers website]


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