He compiled and printed a limited run of the book Tamar and Other Poems well into the final year of tower stonework. It was while Jeffers was engaged in building Hawk Tower between 19 that Jeffers is thought to have discovered his voice as a poet. He appeared to adopt the hawk as his symbol at the time, placing Una's symbol (a unicorn) above her second-floor door and a hawk above the door to his third-floor lookout.

Jeffers named the tower Hawk Tower, purportedly after a hawk that appeared often while he was building the tower, but stopped appearing after he finished construction. The woodwork was completed by a paid carpenter in 1925.

The stonework for the tower was completed in late 1924. He began construction in 1920 at the behest of his wife Una. The cottage was lit by oil lamps until 1949, when Una, dying from cancer, permitted the house to be wired for electricity.Īfter completing a stone garage and wall on his own, Jeffers started work on a tower that would take him four years to complete. Quite a number of quotations are also etched in the stone and woodwork of the house. Stonework from 1924 onward tends to include a wealth of fragments from around the world, including stones, tiles, and various carvings. The style of stonework on the property varies widely, from rectangular, cut stone of the original cottage, to the pick-a-rock-that-fits stonework of the garage and house extensions, to the wildly pocked and twisting character of Hawk Tower, to the minimalistic work performed by Donnan Jeffers on the East Wing. He was unable to finish this last project due to declining health, but his son Donnan managed to complete it. In 1937, Jeffers began work on an east wing that he intended to serve as a home for his sons, who were both in their 20s by then. After ceasing his stonework for a year or two, he then began work on a dining hall that would be completed in 1930. He completed these in 1920, and then began to work on a tower that would take him four years to complete. Soon after the cottage was complete, Jeffers himself would begin building a detached garage and a low, enclosing wall for a courtyard. Initially the house had one bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and an attic. Murphy's stonemason began work on the house immediately and, with Jeffers signing on later as an apprentice, was able to complete the project by mid-August. Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una bought land at Carmel Point in Spring 1919, and in mid-May they contracted Mike Murphy, an established Carmel developer, to build them a stone cottage at Carmel Point. Jeffers' routine was to work on his poetry in the attic in the morning and to work on his building projects, such as Hawk Tower and expanding Tor House, in the afternoon. 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 granite outcrop that might have been known as a ' tor' in southwest England. They remained there until Donnan and his wife Lee died. Donnan Jeffers, one of the couple's two sons, lived with his family in the neighboring east wing of the house. The Jeffers family moved into Tor House in August 1919-after Robinson Jeffers had worked as an apprentice in its construction-and lived there for the remainder of their lives. ( July 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.

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