{"nrhp_refnum":"75000444","name":"Jeffers, Robinson, House","other_names":["Tor House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"26304 Ocean View Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Carmel","county":"Monterey County","state":"CA","lat":36.54210590300005,"lon":-121.93459757,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1975-10-10","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Literature","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Tor House, the home of poet Robinson Jeffers, is a complex of granite buildings and a tower on a half-acre knoll on Carmel Point, Carmel, California, built between 1919 and 1962, largely by Jeffers himself.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the house is more closely tied to the work and career of Robinson Jeffers, regarded as one of the great American poets of his time, than most literary shrines are to their writers. He lived there for forty-three years, died there, and wrote nearly all of his mature work in the house. He also built much of the masonry himself.","narrative":"Tor House is a group of granite buildings on a low knoll above Carmel Bay, on Carmel Point near the town of Carmel, California. Constructed between 1919 and 1962, it was built mostly from stone gathered on nearby beaches, and poet Robinson Jeffers laid much of the masonry with his own hands. A tower of granite boulders, almost forty feet high, connects to the house by courtyard walls. Its upper room, once the study of his wife Una, has Gothic windows and mahogany panelling. Hundreds of stones and fragments from famous places around the world, including Pompeii, Babylon, Angkor and the Great Wall of China, are set into the walls. The property matters because Jeffers, regarded as one of the great American poets of his time, lived here for forty-three years, died here, and wrote almost all of his mature work in the house. Work he did not do himself was done under his supervision or according to his plans.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Robinson Jeffers","architectural_style":"Vernacular","criteria":["B","C"],"status_note":"Listed as occupied private residence in excellent-to-good use; the form's data sheet gives the function as residence both then and now, though the condition boxes are not clearly readable.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:32.147899-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/75000444.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/75000444/96f6911409-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/75000444/96f6911409-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"CelesteDavison at English Wikipedia","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robinson_Jeffers_Hawk_Tower,_Tor_House,_Carmel,_CA_2008_Photo_by_Celeste_Davison.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">CelesteDavison at English Wikipedia</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robinson_Jeffers_Hawk_Tower,_Tor_House,_Carmel,_CA_2008_Photo_by_Celeste_Davison.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123859923","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_House_and_Hawk_Tower","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14684152"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/monterey-county/jeffers-robinson-house-75000444/"}