ISYV Magazine: Houses of Imbach

During the post-war boom of the 1950s, area contractors built scores of brand new houses to accommodate the Santa Ynez Valley’s growing population. With names like Madsen, Jaeger, Imbach, and Skytt, they constructed handsome, durable homes, many of which still grace our quiet streets and suburban slopes.

While cookie-cutter plans ruled the national housing scene, a handful of locals succeeded in creating lasting structures that bore innovative designs and distinguishing touches. Among them, Harold Imbach left us an architectural legacy in the form of “Imbach Houses,” a collection of distinctive homes that remain markedly different from the Mission—and Danish—style buildings around them.

Noted as a colorful character with a penchant for earthy language, Harold Imbach experimented with floor plans, resized rooms and turned out wonderfully spacious homes. In contrast to the Danish builders who relied almost entirely on Philippine mahogany, he utilized a variety of stylish woods, while creating expansive spaces that were unusual for the period.

2005 Winter Home Page
Click Here

Imbach-designed kitchens tended to be long and narrow, with saltillo-like tiles covering the floor and knotty pine cabinets lining the walls. His living rooms featured impressive stone fireplaces. Even the laundry rooms, thoughtfully paneled with finely milled pine, offered a comfortable workspace in which to wash, dry and fold.

While Imbach built homes, his wife, Janis, ran Hansel & Gretel, a children’s store located in what is now the parking lot of the Mustard Seed restaurant on Mission Drive. Harold remodeled the little house-turned-store, installed a bay window in front, and painted it barn red and white, before it was eventually moved to a hillside in Ballard, where it currently serves as a cozy guesthouse.

Today, the Arden Jensen home on Alamo Pintado Road in Solvang looks just about the same as it did when Imbach built it. Over the years, the only major change made by owners Judge Arden and Flossie Jensen was the addition of a skylight over the kitchen.

Nearby and partially hidden by new houses, sits another of Imbach’s signature homes. Though it has been extensively remodeled, it still bears the features that Imbach favored and traces of his distinctive touch. Several other Imbach Houses, in Los Olivos, Ballard, on Solvang’s Third Street and in Janin Acres, continue to provide comfort and shelter to area residents.

Well designed and carefully built, the Imbach Houses have withstood the vagaries of domestic fashion and the rigors of time. They bear witness to the creative skills of Harold Imbach, one of the Santa Ynez Valley’s premier contractors during the 1950s and 1960s and a visionary whose name lives on in the architectural treasures he left behind.