PROMINENT POINT LOMA ARCHITECT
Architect Richard J. Lareau lightened bank board meetings with jokes. He maintained high school interests in photography, tennis, coin and stamp collecting and later took up sailing and golfing.
His decadeslong service on the Point Loma Association and Peninsula Bank boards and in various neighborhood causes earned him the unofficial title “Mr. Point Loma.” And he was a prodigious fundraiser for Balboa Park institutions.
But it’s his mid-century modern architectural work that serves as a permanent legacy — from wood-and-glass custom homes and circular-shaped public buildings, like churches and the Mission Bay Visitors Center, to an assortment of public libraries, school buildings and Navy facilities.
“Dick was an architect before his time.” Bob Brower Point Loma Nazarene President
Lareau died April 10 from complications of a stroke. He was 94.
Just out of architecture school, he worked on the design of the El Cortez Hotel glass elevator in the mid-1950s. A decade later he was designing his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house at San Diego State University, where its two lion statues still guard the entrance. He also served as campus architect for California Western University, now Point Loma Nazarene University, and designed the Barnes Tennis Center in Ocean Beach.
Like so many successful architects, he knew how to market as well as design. Once, when he was seeking a building permit for a college campus in Nairobi, Kenya, he didn’t correct an official who, looking at Lareau’s business card bearing the words “president” and “California,” called him the “president of California.” The official handed over the permit ahead of 50 other peo
ple in line.
“Prototypically after the war, he bootstrapped his own little firm, got some cool clients and did a significant amount of work,” said Keith York, who maintains the ModernSanDiego.com website as a guide to postWorld War II architects.
Former county supervisor and architect Ron Roberts met Lareau at SDSU as the SAE fraternity house was being planned and interned in Lareau’s firm in the late-1960s. The city and county declared “Richard John Lareau Day” in 2014 in recognition of his decades of civic service and contributions.
“For me, he became a mentor and a longtime friend,” Roberts said.
Born Oct. 17, 1927, in Bremerton, Wash., Richard John Lareau moved to Chula Vista with his family when he was 4. At Sweetwater High School, he was the school photographer, played on the tennis team and delivered what was believed to be the hilly area’s longest bicycle paper route for The Union-Tribune.
After V-5 flight training program in the Navy following World War II, he studied at the University of New Mexico and SDSU before transferring to UC Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture in 1955. His master’s thesis focused on Mission Bay Park.
“The park should have a oneness of concept,” Lareau told the Mission Bay Park Commission later that year.
His first jobs were at the San Diego firms of Kitchen and Hunt and Paderewski, Mitchell & Dean, where he worked on the now-gone El Cortez glass elevator.
In 1957 he started Richard Lareau & Associates and grew his staff at his Nimitz Boulevard office to a peak of 15. His “Pan-Pacific House,” still standing in Del Cerro, was featured in the 1958 “Parade of Homes” for its incorporation of numerous indoor-outdoor spaces.
Beginning in 1959, he designed numerous buildings, including the gym, stadium, library and dorms at the Cal Western, later renamed U.S. International University. He also was master architect for USIU’s Scripps Ranch campus, now Alliant University.
“Dick was an architect before his time,” said Point Loma Nazarene President Bob Brower. “His creativity and vision coupled with his sincere desire to serve his community made him a friend to all.”
Lareau’s wife, Vickie, said USIU President William Rust commissioned him to plan campuses around the world, asking him to hop on an international flight on the spur of the moment.
“Dick would find a way to comply,” she said, “and with USIU paying for transportation, got a chance to see a lot of very interesting places and whet our appetite for worldwide travel.”
In an interview for the obituary earlier this year for fellow mid-century architect, Hal Sadler, Lareau recalled how on one of his many USIU trips, he convinced Kenyan officials that building with wood rather than stone was an acceptable approach.
“They gave me a desk in the office and I designed what I knew their (national) president would like to have,” Lareau recalled — an African rather than a British colonial motif. “We built it and the Africans loved it.”
Perhaps Lareau’s most prominent project was the Mission Bay Visitors Center, a 4,500-square-foot building with an observation tower, which opened in 1969 at the foot of Clairemont Drive. Lareau likened it to a “sculptural seashell,” inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
“It really is the center of San Diego,” said Bradley Schnell, an architect who is restoring and repurposing the building as the Mission Bay Beach Club, a restaurant and retail space.
Also visible to freeway motorists is Lareau’s Barnes Tennis Center, which opened in 1995 at the western terminus of Interstate 8, and is devoted to training young tennis players.
“I would say he was very, very visionary in the way he planned and designed the buildings,” said Kathy Willette, who chaired the board in its early years. “We had wonderful, joyful conversations of what would be there and what we could afford.”
Besides his architectural work, Lareau served on the boards of the city Historic Resources Board, Peninsula Bank, Point Loma Association, San Diego Air & Space Museum and Balboa Park Committee. He cofounded the Junto Group of local leaders and captained the San Diego Yacht Club’s Cal 25 racing fleet.
“It was his selfless dedication and warmth which endeared him to everyone who met him,” said the museum’s executive director, Jim Kidrick. He dubbed Lareau “the grinder” for relentlessly pursuing donors for museum projects. He cochaired the annual golf tournament for more than 20 years.
At the Point Loma Association, Lareau is remembered for his annual slide shows and at the bank for his lighthearted jokes, mined from Playboy magazine.
Lareau is survived by his second wife Victory and their children, Lisa Traylor and Mark Lareau; and two children by his first wife, Jeanne Doyle, Vikki Lane and Lance Lareau; and nine grandchildren.
A celebration of life is scheduled from 4 to 7 p.m. May 17 at the Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park. The family suggests donations in his memory to the Barnes Tennis Center or the museum.