The best surf & design hotels · Sonoma & Mendocino
The Sea Ranch Lodge
In 1964, Oceanic Properties hired landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and the architectural firm Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull and Whitaker to build a community on a desolate ten-mile stretch of Sonoma County coastline that sheep ranchers had called Rancho Del Mar. The brief was something that had not been attempted before: demonstrate that people can inhabit a beautiful and fragile coastline without destroying it. The result was Sea Ranch — a 7,000-acre community of 1,800 homes built in clusters across meadows and bluffs, with angled shed roofs, unpainted timber cladding, no lawns, no fences, and a covenant that enforced stewardship of the land as a condition of ownership. The Lodge, built in 1968 as the community's cultural hub, eventually lost its soul through changing hands and disrepair. In 2021 it was restored by San Francisco designer Nicole Hollis — public spaces first, then the North Building's seventeen guest rooms in 2023, each looking out at the Pacific from within a building that still teaches architects how to think about land. Sea Ranch anticipated shed roofs, timber cladding, clerestory windows, and native landscaping before any of them were trends. No TVs in any room. Binoculars on every windowsill instead.
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The hotel
The Design
Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull and Whitaker. Lawrence Halprin. 1964. Sea Ranch taught a generation of architects how to build on a coastline.
Nicole Hollis's restoration preserved the original bones — the angled ceilings, the timber structure, the relationship between the building and the bluff — and layered in a soothing mid-century register: Hans Wegner elbow chairs, Malm fireplaces, custom closets and headboards built by Santa Cruz Woodworks. Seventeen rooms. All face the ocean.
The Design
Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull and Whitaker. Lawrence Halprin. 1964. Sea Ranch taught a generation of architects how to build on a coastline.
Nicole Hollis's restoration preserved the original bones — the angled ceilings, the timber structure, the relationship between the building and the bluff — and layered in a soothing mid-century register: Hans Wegner elbow chairs, Malm fireplaces, custom closets and headboards built by Santa Cruz Woodworks. Seventeen rooms. All face the ocean.
The Sustainability
A covenant that enforces stewardship as a condition of ownership. Built in 1964 to prove development and conservation aren't opposites.
The Sea Ranch's founding covenant requires residents to maintain native vegetation, prohibits fences and lawns, and enforces the architectural guidelines that kept the community coherent for sixty years. The Lodge runs a closed-loop farm south of the property supplying the kitchen. A partnership with Kind Traveler supports Farm to Pantry in Sonoma County. The sustainability position predates the word.
The Sustainability
A covenant that enforces stewardship as a condition of ownership. Built in 1964 to prove development and conservation aren't opposites.
The Sea Ranch's founding covenant requires residents to maintain native vegetation, prohibits fences and lawns, and enforces the architectural guidelines that kept the community coherent for sixty years. The Lodge runs a closed-loop farm south of the property supplying the kitchen. A partnership with Kind Traveler supports Farm to Pantry in Sonoma County. The sustainability position predates the word.
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