For farmer-turned-developer Henry Segerstrom and his wife,
Elizabeth, cultural movers in Orange County, home is a
vast play of art and light on Balboa Peninsula.
By Janet Eastman
December 2006
HENRY SEGERSTROM dreams big. He always has. When the real
estate developer thought about creating a shopping center in
Orange County in the 1960s, he created South Coast Plaza. When he
wanted to bring art and culture to the region, he and his family gave
money and land to establish the Orange County Performing Arts
Center, relocate the South Coast Repertory Theater and open a
new concert hall this fall bearing the Segerstrom name.
So when it came time to build his own home in the 1980s, he
wasn’t about to scale back. Yet in Segerstrom’s case, ambition
means more than pulling out a fat checkbook— which is saying a lot for one of the richest men in Orange County. It also means perseverance and over-the-fence diplomacy.
In the pantheon of Orange County multimillionaires, Henry Segerstrom is different. He
didn’t (quite) inherit his wealth like Irvine Ranch’s Joan Irvine Smith or O’Neill Ranch’s
RichardO’Neill,and he isn’t (quite) as ostentatious as Irvine Co.’sDonald Bren. The Seg-
erstrom family, after all, got its start farming lima beans, and old habits are hard to lose.
Like the habit of patience. Segerstrom will wait out anyone to get what he wants. It’s
something he learned from his grandfather, Charles John, who first farmed the fabled
bean on 20 leased acres in 1898 and over the years acquired more property for more fields and dairy farms.
So it should come as no surprise that Segerstrom, who changed his family business
from agriculture to real estate development in the 1950s, applied the same strategy when it came to amassing six contiguous lots for his private residence on Balboa Peninsula. Nor should it surprise that in spite of its size — 7,250 square feet — and its illustrious artwork —a Henry Moore here, a Milton Avery there, an 18th century Venetian angel— that there is still a certain down-to-earth modesty in its conspicuously material ambition.
For its architect, James LeNeve, it was an aesthetic that was easy to pull off, and for Segerstrom
and his wife, Elizabeth, it seems almost second nature.
“To Elizabeth and me, this house re-
lates to our appreciation of living in
Orange County,” he says.
Henry Segerstrom is hardly a simple
man. You don’t get where he is in life at
the age of 83 on simplicity. So perhaps it
makes sense that when it was time to
build his palace on Balboa Peninsula, he
aspired for just that — simplicity.
With its white facade, its sandy
beach, clean lines and gardens, the resi-
dence looks something like a cross be-
tween an ocean liner and a Mediterra-
nean villa. Step inside and you will find
an open floor plan. No walls separate
the dining room from the sitting area or
the seating around the fireplace. Twin
Matisses hang on either side of the man-
tel but are overpowered by the view of
the bay.
To reach the water, Segerstrom steps
through glass doors that have screens of
welded metal and melted glass by Ab-
stract Expressionist Claire Falkenstein.
He strides across a large patio he de-
signed and had plated in the same Ari-
zona sandstone that artist Isamu Nogu-
chi used for a public garden in Costa
Mesa. Across the water, a sailboat glides
by.
“This is the reason I’m here,” he says.
Segerstrom bought the first lot in
1962 from the granddaughter of Andrew
Carnegie, and he and his family divided
their time between their homes in north
Santa Ana and on Balboa Peninsula.
Back then, lots on this coveted piece of
real estate were passed on from one gen-
eration to the next and rarely sold. One
lot he eventually bought was owned by a
family for 40 years; another he bought
from a family that had owned it for 70
years.
Over two decades, he acquired his
lots by talking to the owners, then wait-
ing until they were ready to sell. By the
mid-1980s, he had six lots, two facing the
bay and extending back 85 feet to a nar-
row alley and four on the other side of
the alley, stretching to one of the penin-
sula’s main streets.
It was time to build.
Segerstrom wanted the design to fit
the land. To give him privacy. To unwind
in at the end of the day.
“This is the home we like to come
home to,” he says, sitting on a chenille
sofa with his third wife, Elizabeth, 52. He
still goes to work each day to Costa
Mesa next to the family’s original farm-
house. “We like it serene, surrounded by
nature.”
When asked about the design, he re-
counts a trip that he and his friend No-
guchi took to the Salk Institute in La
Jolla. They were both mesmerized by
the work of Modernist Luis Barragán,
who collaborated with Louis Kahnto
create the incandescent space stretch-
ing between the buildings. It was
enough to warrant a trip to Mexico.
With architect LeNeve, who had
worked on many of South Coast Plaza’s
stores, Segerstrom and his then-wife,
Renée, flew to Mexico City to meet with
Barragán. Although too ill to take on the
project, the master of color and light in-
structed his assistant to give thema
tour of his work.
“We both liked Barragán’s style and
flare,” says LeNeve, who has since re-
tired to San Miguel de Allende. “A lot of
things have been published of his but
most of it is his more dramatic work.
Many of his projects were small. When
we went down there and looked, we
saw so many different ideas, such as
windows that shelter you and still main-
tain light. Even though Barragán was
not involved, his was an image we ad-
mired.”
The blue, gold and orange ochre they
saw there would inspire some of the
shades in the Segerstrom home. And
the pool, decorative cut-out walls and
lattice wooden gates are right out of
Barragán’s design book.
But the greatest challenge was to
unify the lots, especially where the alley
cut through them with the residence in
the front and the pool and garden in the
back. A few architectural tricks make
the parcels appear seamless.
Both properties have white stucco
walls, some more than 30 feet high, and
the portion of the alley between the
house and the garden area is paved with
tiles. And when Segerstrom opens the
gates, the alignment is a straight line
from the entrance of the house to the
garden, where Elizabeth grows herbs
and fruit trees.
Henry and Elizabeth Segerstrom are
standing underneath a voluminous spi-
ral staircase, the centerpiece of their
two-story foyer. It’s dramatic, a thick,
smooth swirl of white like the top ofa gi-
ant wedding cake, flowing, inviting, no
harsh lines. Sunlight streams through
lattice skylights and narrow celestial
windows.
It’s all white here. White light. White
walls. White flowers. White candles.
White staircase.
Asimple bench upholstered in but-
tery yellow and cream stripes is against
awall. The blond wood floor seems to
flow on forever, into the main room.
“I didn’t want a Colonial or some
kind of beach theme,” Segerstrom says.
“See how clean this looks?”
No wonder that he’ll tell you, if asked,
the story of how the Segerstrom farm
was weedless. He’s proud of his family’s
farming roots — he introduces himself
as a farmer — and is largely a self-edu-
cated man in the world of art. (After
servingin the Army during World War II,
he earned a bachelor’s and master’s de-
gree in business from Stanford, thanks
to the GI Bill.)
Over the years, he has taken the time
to cultivate relationships with the art-
ists whom he’s commissioned: Noguchi,
the sculptors Richard Lippold and
Richard Serra.
And slowly Segerstrom has installed
more than 20 contemporary works in
public places. “Little by little,” hesays,
“we gathered a world-class collection.”
But he also credits his wife, Eliza-
beth, who has been involved in selecting
the art for both the public and private
collections. He married her in 2000 after
the death of his wife, Renée. She was liv-
ing in Manhattan working as a psycholo-
gist at the time they met; he was review-
ing plans for the new concert hall with
architect Cesar Pelli. Of course, he told
her that he was a farmer, and they mar-
ried three weeks later.
Offering Orange County (she calls it
“Orange Country”), their vision of what
high art and culture is requires a certain
temerity. And there are critics. The Seg-
erstroms’ aesthetic is somewhat cool
and remote, but they are confident in
their mission.
Segerstrom is unabashed. When
wooing artists, politicians or dignitar-
ies, he presents them with anHermès
bag. Inside is a burlap pouch filled with
lima beans.
And in the living room, on a granite
coffee table, there is a green stone
shaped like a giant lima bean. Elizabeth
cups it in both hands as if it were a fra-
gile Fabergé egg. “Isamu Noguchi made
this for Henry,” she says.