During the 40s and 50s, Southern California's new neighborhoods were created on what had originally been established as agricultural lands. Tracts of homes rose among citrus groves to house newly arriving populations, built in the image of the builders who built them and those who were to live in them--transplants habituated to what had by then become the iconic American home: compact, inward oriented, sloped roofs, wood framed, painted wood siding, surrounded by "yards." Modernists such as Schindler, Neutra and Ain strove to make a new kind of home inspired by an idealized future world and in harmony with realities of the climate and changing ways of life here. But there remained exceptions to the norm. The Baer Residence is a transformation of one of those homes, from the mid-century iconic Midwestern frame house into a semi-urban, garden oriented townhouse, open, light filled and confident in its simplicity.