The Lake House, Wallace Cunningham’s one Escondido house
The Wallace Cunningham Lake House at a glance
The Lake House, also called the Ganymede House, is a 1988 house by San Diego designer Wallace Cunningham on Orange Lane in Escondido, above Lake Hodges. It has arched ceilings, rounded tile walls, Saltillo floors, a detached art studio, and an etched-glass window by Ling Po, Frank Lloyd Wright's rendering artist.
Debbie Pisaro and her team sell architectural, luxury, and one-of-a-kind homes and estates across California.
A Taliesin-trained designer who built almost everything on the coast, and the one house he made in Escondido.
What is the Wallace Cunningham Lake House?
On the Del Dios side of Escondido, where the land drops toward Lake Hodges, there is a house on Orange Lane that looks nothing like its neighbors. It was built in 1988 for Andrew Mattison, and it has gone by three names since: the Mattison House, the Lake House, and the Ganymede House. The designer was Wallace Cunningham, who would go on to become one of San Diego County's best-known residential designers, and this is the only house he built in Escondido.
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The house runs 2,957 square feet, with three bedrooms and four baths, on 1.21 acres. A detached art studio of about 1,020 square feet sits apart from it. Inside, the ceilings are high and arched, the walls curve in rounded ceramic tile, and the floors are Mexican Saltillo tile. Outside, the land looks across Lake Hodges and old olive groves, is fenced and gated, and backs onto preserved land, so the view stays open.
It is a house built around one idea, that a room can be shaped the way a sculpture is shaped, and three decades on it still reads that way.
Wallace Cunningham, designer
Wallace Cunningham was born on October 18, 1954, in White Township, Pennsylvania. In 1977 Marya Lilien, who had been one of Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentices, brought him to Taliesin, and the Wright world shaped everything he did after. He started his first house, the Wing House in Rancho Santa Fe, while still a student there, and in 1979 he founded his San Diego practice, Wallace E. Cunningham, Inc.
The title on that practice matters. His own firm calls him "President, Principal Designer," and Friends of San Diego Architecture titles its page on him "Wallace Cunningham, Designer." He holds no AIA membership and no published California architecture license, and by his own account he is largely self-taught. That has not slowed the work: Architectural Digest put him on its designer list in 2004, 2007, and 2010, and the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame inducted him with his own description of what he does: "I do one of a kind sculptures for people to live in."
For anyone selling one of his houses, the word to use is designer. Cunningham himself uses it, and listing copy that calls him an architect claims something his own firm does not.
Cunningham's own firm titles him "President, Principal Designer." In listing copy, call him a designer, the word he uses himself.
A Taliesin window in an Escondido house
The detail almost nobody notices is in the main suite: an etched-glass window by Ling Po. Ling Po joined the Taliesin Fellowship in 1946 and became Frank Lloyd Wright's own rendering artist, the hand behind many of the drawings that show Wright's buildings to the world. Putting his glass into a house by a younger Taliesin-trained designer ties the Lake House to Wright's circle twice over.
That thread runs through California. Wright's own work in the state includes the Walker House in Carmel, and the broader record of the architects who worked here is in the architects guide. San Diego County never got a built Wright house, so its Wright connections run through the people he trained, and the Lake House carries two of them.
A Taliesin man's glass in a house by another Taliesin-trained hand.
A coastal designer's inland exception
Almost all of Cunningham's California houses are near the coast. Of the twenty with known addresses, eight are in La Jolla and five in Rancho Santa Fe, and only two are inland: one in Julian, and this one. USModernist catalogs forty-one of his houses and projects in all, from 1982 to 2025.
The best known is the Razor Residence on La Jolla Farms Road, finished in 2007: white concrete, stainless steel, and glass, cantilevered over the cliff above the ocean. Aperture in Cardiff-by-the-Sea and Cascade in Park City, Utah, are later works, and his houses are collected in the monograph Materializing the Immaterial. Set beside those, the Lake House is earlier and warmer, built of tile and curved plaster instead of concrete and steel, and it shows where the later work came from.
It has also changed hands more than most of his houses. Public records show sales in 1998, 2012, and 2023, and the 2023 marketing described a full renovation to a high standard of finish. For a designer whose houses usually sell once or never, three sales of one house is unusual.
Earlier and warmer than the coastal work, the Lake House shows where it came from.
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Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. Ask Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 about private inventory across California.
Join the Pocket Listings listWhere it sits in Escondido's design record
For a town search results treat as an architectural blank spot, Escondido holds a surprising amount of designed work, and the Lake House is one of five buildings the Escondido architectural homes guide maps. Rob Wellington Quigley built twice here: the transit center on West Valley Parkway and the Valkirs residence, a 1987 house among granite boulders, built a year before the Lake House. Drew Hubbell's net-zero Serenity Project sits in the north of town, and the family behind it is profiled in James Hubbell. Charles Moore's California Center for the Arts holds downtown.
Three of those five are houses by designers trained or working in the organic tradition, which says something about inland North County: it has long attracted people who wanted a house shaped by its land. The county-wide picture is in San Diego architectural homes, and Rob Wellington Quigley has his own profile.
How do you buy or sell a Wallace Cunningham house?
A Cunningham house sells to a buyer who is looking for Cunningham, and that buyer may live anywhere. The work starts with the record: the original drawings, the permits, the designer's name used correctly, and details like the Ling Po window documented with photographs. An automated valuation has no field for any of it, so the price has to be built against architectural sales rather than neighborhood averages; Coastline 840 has written on pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home, and owners who want a starting number can request a home valuation.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across San Diego and the surrounding neighborhoods. Coastline 840 is a boutique California practice; why we built Coastline 840 explains the thinking and why boutique real estate outperforms big-box brokerages explains the model. What an architectural homes specialist does differently is on its own page, and the page on the best real estate agent in San Diego sets out what to ask any agent first.
Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for the Lake House, and nothing on this page says the house is for sale. She represents buyers on architectural homes across California, regardless of who holds a given listing.
Questions about the Lake House
Who designed the Lake House in Escondido?
Wallace Cunningham, the San Diego designer who founded Wallace E. Cunningham, Inc. in 1979 after time at Taliesin. He built the Lake House on Orange Lane in 1988 for Andrew Mattison. It is also called the Ganymede House, and it is his only house in Escondido and one of two he built inland.
Is Wallace Cunningham an architect?
No, and his own firm does not call him one. He is titled "President, Principal Designer," has no published California architecture license and no AIA membership, and is largely self-taught after Taliesin. Architectural Digest named him to its designer list in 2004, 2007, and 2010, and he describes his houses as sculptures to live in.
What is special about the Lake House?
Its shapes and its glass. The house has high arched ceilings, rounded ceramic-tile walls, Mexican Saltillo floors, and a detached art studio, set above Lake Hodges beside preserved land. In the main suite is an etched-glass window by Ling Po, who joined the Taliesin Fellowship in 1946 and was Frank Lloyd Wright's rendering artist.
How big is the Wallace Cunningham Lake House?
Public records list the house at 2,957 square feet, with three bedrooms and four baths, on 1.21 acres. A detached art studio adds about 1,020 square feet. The property is fenced and gated, looks across Lake Hodges and old olive groves, and backs onto preserved land, which keeps the view open.
What is the Razor Residence?
The Razor Residence is Wallace Cunningham's best-known house, finished in 2007 on La Jolla Farms Road in La Jolla. It is built of white concrete, stainless steel, and glass, cantilevered over the cliff above the ocean. The earlier Lake House in Escondido shows the same sculptural instinct worked in tile and curved plaster.
Has the Lake House sold before?
Yes. Public records show sales in 1998, 2012, and 2023, and the 2023 marketing described a renovation to a high standard of finish. Three sales is unusual for a Cunningham house, since most of his houses have sold once or never, which makes the Lake House the most traded of his San Diego County work.
Is Debbie Pisaro the listing agent for the Lake House?
No. Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for the Lake House, and this page does not say the house is for sale. She writes about documented California architecture at Just San Diego Field Notes and represents buyers on architectural homes across California, on or off market, regardless of who holds a listing.
Who is a good full-service real estate agent in San Diego?
Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 is a full-service San Diego realtor: pricing, preparation, marketing, negotiation, and escrow, with research on a house's record added for anything architect- or designer-built. She is a 24-year veteran and Inman Luxury Leader who represents buyers and sellers across San Diego and the surrounding neighborhoods.
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Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro, California real estate agent, DRE #01369110. Coastline 840 is a brand/DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker.
Sources. USModernist's Wallace E. Cunningham catalog; Wallace E. Cunningham, Inc.; Friends of San Diego Architecture; the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame; Wikipedia; La Jolla Light; the 2023 listing record. Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for any house named on this page.
Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 is a California real estate agent, DRE #01369110, a 24-year veteran of California real estate and an Inman Luxury Leader, specializing in architectural, historic, and luxury homes across the state, San Diego County included. Her practice is Coastline 840. About Debbie
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