Reservations must be made in advance by calling the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation offices. Tours of the buildings are limited to six people, and are given hourly from 10am to 3pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Tor House is now owned by the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation, and has been preserved so that much of it looks as it did in Robinson Jeffers' time. 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. He began construction in 1920, intending to build the tower for his wife. (Originally the house had one bedroom and a two part sleeping loft, a kitchen, living room and a bathroom.) The house was lit by oil lamps and candles until 1949, when electricity was installed.Īfter 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 4 years to complete.

After completion of Hawk Tower, Jeffers continued work on Tor House by adding a dining room. They decided to remain there Jeffers bought land and began construction on Tor House out of stones with help from a local contractor. Robinson Jeffers came to the coast of Carmel in 1914 with his wife Una Jeffers. 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. He lived out the rest of his life in Tor House, while continuing to add on to it. The Carmel area's influence in Robinson Jeffers' work becomes apparent in his poems such as his work “The Purse Seine,” a poem about the local fishing industry. He described the land he chose as the site for the house as being like a 'prow and plunging cutwater” of a ship. Jeffers named it 'Tor' house after the type of ground on which the house was situated, a rocky outcrop known as a 'tor'. Jeffers began construction on Tor House in 1919 and with the aid of a stonemason completed it in the same year. 26304 Ocean View Ave., Carmel, California

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