The developer who brought midcentury modern tract homes with glass-enclosed atriums to Oregon and permanently altered consumers’ preferences for indoor-outdoor living, Robert (Bob) Rummer, passed away on Friday. He was ninety-seven.
Rummer is credited by architecture and housing specialists as a hands-on builder who personally chose the home sites, managed the construction, and established a market for his contemporary homes in Beaverton’s Oak Hills Historic District, Gresham, Lake Oswego, and Southwest Portland’s Bohmann Park tract.
Despite weak economies and waning consumer demand, the friendly former insurance salesman persevered. From 1962 to 1977, he produced single-story homes with glass walls and high ceilings. After that, he followed current purchasing patterns and built homes in the classic design.
He talked of building again long after he retired, and he witnessed the opening of Rummer Development in 2024.
Affordably priced modern homes, initially made popular by well-known California developer Joseph Eichler and modeled after the designs of Los Angeles architect A. Quincy Jones, were imitated by Rummer and others. They reflected an optimistic post-World War II America, where suburbanization was expanding and engineering and technology jobs were expanding.
Sliding glass doors in the new backyard-oriented house style were perfect for hosting posh Mad Men-style patio parties.
According to Peggy Moretti, former executive director of Restore Oregon, a preservation organization that in 2016 brought more than 600 modern design enthusiasts to a tour of Rummer-built homes in the Oak Hills master-planned neighborhood, Bob personified the zeal and spirit of entrepreneurship of the time.
Rummer discussed building homes once more with The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2022, when he was 95 years old and residing in Woodburn’s Cascade Park Retirement Community. Invitations to speak at events and the news of the rising prices of the contemporary homes he first sold for $25,000 to $32,000 on quarter-acre lots excited him.
Who can afford to buy a house for $1.2 million? Then he repeated what he had been saying since he retired: We need to construct more. He inquired incredulously.
Rummer celebrated his 97th birthday in the house he constructed for his family in Southwest Portland in May 2024, surrounded by fans. He broke the news there: He was building once more.
According to Rummer Development CEO Aubrey McCormick, the new business will construct cutting-edge midcentury modern homes that are influenced by Rummer’s tradition and focused on community and nature.
Longtime friends Terry Gilson and Chad Pierson, who are also members of the Rummer Development team, were with McCormick when Rummer passed away.
Residential general contractor Pierson noted that Rummer built single-story homes with a lovely flow and attractive form that are still accessible to people of all ages, while Gilson referred to Rummer as a rock star during his 97th birthday celebration.
Doctors and engineers were the first purchasers; today, many owners are designers. Even if the phrase wasn’t coined when the original owners opened a modest front door and entered a sky-revealing atrium, everyone prefers the minimalist midcentury modern look.
Eichler and Rummer are credited with being ahead of their time by journalist and Portland architecture blogger Brian Libby. “The uncommon midcentury modern concept of a minimum of interior walls between communal spaces, like the kitchen and living and dining rooms, prefigured how people would increasingly want to live,” Libby said, even though nine out of ten homes built for decades after World War II were in the ranch style.
In 2022, Rummer chuckled when he was informed that many of his homes’ long-term occupants eventually replaced the playpen in the living room with a piano, utilizing the adaptable rooms for new functions. The 95-year-old added, smiling, “I didn’t realize I was building for old people.”
Rummers, as the incredibly livable homes are known, are more popular than ever, according to family friend and Modern Homes Portland real estate agent Marisa Swenson. Swenson referred to Bob Rummer as a risk-taker who changed the real estate market by introducing daring, distinctive home designs to our region and pushing purchasers to adopt new lifestyles.
Accidental builder
Builder Bob Rummer’s wife of 70 years, Phyllis Rummer, claims that her husband can still remember “every tracing of every [Rummer] house ever drawn.”Yao Long, Stephanie
Leslie (Les) and Agnes Rummer welcomed Bob into the world on May 26, 1927, in Davenport, Washington. Bob went to school in Davenport, Centralia, Washington, and then Dallas, Oregon, where his father ran a dry cleaners. His father was a tailor.
Bob Rummer attempted to enroll at the University of Washington in Seattle after two years of service as an aviation radio operator, but classes were already full with other veterans who qualified for GI Bill tuition assistance. Rather, he switched to Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon, after a year at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Washington.
I can bullshit with anyone, Rummer, who is famous for his folksy banter, claimed to have a bachelor’s degree.
He met his future wife, Phyllis, who was 19 at the time, in front of a movie theater in Newberg when he was 21. In 2019, Rummer told The Oregonian/OregonLive, “I wanted to get to know that girl while she was waiting for her dad to pick her up.”
According to Rummer, they were married for 72 years when Phyllis passed away quietly in her sleep in 2021 at the age of 91.
He was a life insurance salesman, a job the outgoing Rummer detested, when his daughter Cindy was born. He claimed that no one was interested in discussing my business.
Nevertheless, he succeeded. He established what is now a general insurance company in Newberg. He sold the company to Ray Hopp, who changed its name to Hopp Insurance Agency, in 1961 after he made the decision to focus entirely on building.
According to Ray’s son Randy Hopp, who has known the Rummers for over 60 years, Bob was always a family man, and I believe that helped shape some of his ideas in the Rummer homes. Bob enjoyed coming up with and making sensible, family-friendly designs. He was devoted to Rummer residences. He continued since he was thinking about building again.
When Bob Rummer purchased real estate off Villa Road, which was then a country road outside of Newberg, he had no prior expertise with floor layouts, construction, or development. In 1959, he constructed a home for his family and developed a subdivision that the city eventually annexed.
According to Rummer’s 2019 feature by The Oregonian/OregonLive, that was the beginning of everything. Have you heard the tale of my wife moving to the South and locating a home she prefers?
Following a trip to see her sister in Northern California, Phyllis informed her husband that she would like to exchange their new, traditional-style home for a contemporary Eichler home she had seen in the Rancho San Miguel neighborhood of Walnut Creek.
He notoriously disregarded her advice for a year until he came across an article about Eichler homes in Look magazine in 1960. After looking at the pictures, he recognized a chance. At the age of 32, he liquidated his insurance company and started Rummer Homes in his living room using a plywood sheet supported by two sawhorses as a makeshift drafting table.
Eichler’s living and dining rooms, which Rummer imitated, are drastically orientated toward the backyard in contrast to traditional homes, particularly the often seen ranch-style home. There is no picture window or front porch to give an idea of what’s within.
Even on gloomy Pacific Northwest days, the simple front door leads to floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights set into vaulting wood-planked ceilings that let in plenty of natural light and a sense of the outdoors.
According to Eugene-based writer, historian, and designer Joe Barthlow, Rummer was tipped off to a cost-cutting secret by Eichler’s architect, A. Quincy Jones of Los Angeles: The crucial factor in post-and-beam construction is the 6-foot, 4-inch gap between posts, which enables sliding doors and uniform glass panes.
According to Barthlow’s study, Rummer paid Jones $500 for plans and his travel expenses to Portland in 1961. After that, Rummer engaged Toby Moore, a young architect, to create blueprints based on Jones’ ideas and contemporary house plans that were published in Sunset and other magazines.
These homes were difficult to build and Rummer should get credit for doing so, said Barthlow, who dispelled rumors that Eichler tried to sue Rummer.
Rummer recalled how financiers, building code inspectors, and real estate brokers who were perplexed by his idea constantly hindered him. He used an internal sales team to highlight the benefits of splashy Roman-style sunken bathtubs, Japanese-inspired Shoji sliding closet doors, and energy-efficient radiant heated floors.
In the Bohmann Park tract in southwest Portland, where Rummer constructed 62 homes and named a roadway Cynthia Terrace after his daughter, Bob and Phyllis sold their home in 1985. With a similar sense of humor, the pair relocated to San Bernardino, California, and established a mortgage company that continues to this day.
After that, they relocated to Medford, Oregon, where they continued to focus on his mortgage business, and finally, they retired to Woodburn.
In 2019, Bob Rummer stated, “I started three businesses and they’re still in existence.”
When Rummer left Bohmann Park, he threw out all his floor designs, which had been significantly altered to fit each lot. “Decades later, I didn’t think they were important,” he remarked.
Still, Phyllis said in 2019 that her husband could recall every tracing of every Rummer house ever drawn. She added proudly that her husband built homes while other people built houses.
I m fussy, Bob Rummer told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Rummer is survived by daughter Cynthia J. Morton of Beaverton.
Janet Eastman covers design and trends. Reach her at 503-294-4072,[email protected] follow her on X@janeteastman.
