The co-op is a faux Tudor mansion built in 1906 during the Decorative Art's Movement by John Galen Howard, noted architect of Doe Library and Sather Tower. Ridge House was commissioned by the University of California Berkeley for a prospective faculty member, who ultimately turned down the offer and the estate. The land, and historic Ridge House remained in University hands for a time, during which it was the temporary private residence of the Hearst children during their undergraduate years at U.C. Berkeley. Following its use by the Hearst family, the house became a sorority house for the University. As a co-op, Ridge House, purchased by the Berkeley Student Cooperative, (formerly the University Student Cooperative Association) in 1944, was originally all-male, but was later opened to all gender identities. Although now retrofitted for the purposes of student housing, there are still four working Rumford fireplaces, exposed, half-timber redwood beams, a secret passageways and the remnants of an archaic subterranean speaker system used to pipe chamber music into various rooms of the house. The Second floor of the house has retained most of the original features of the home. This included the Ballroom, which has remained largely intact and now serves as the Dining room for the Ridgelings. The former dining room, found on the same floor was converted into an extension of the kitchen following a remodeling of this space in 1989. This reutilization included the construction of a second door to the kitchen and the concealment of the dining room fireplace behind a false wall. Changes to this floor also included the conversion of the balcony on this floor into an additional room, with the balcony elevated to the third-floor. While the library and drawing room have been both converted into living spaces, Ridge House none-the-less maintains the greatest ratio of common space to numbers of residents, per capita, of houses in the BSC. Ridge currently sits on roughly 1/2 acre of land, all that remains of the original parcel that once span from Euclid Avenue to Scenic. While the land to the east is now occupied by Casa Zimbabwe (formerly known as Ridge Project), the two houses share a common courtyard and Ridge maintains an ample garden, which services both as a respite from urban living and a way of growing fresh fruits and veggies for its members. In 2012, Ridge House celebrated its 75-year of affiliation with the Berkeley Student Cooperative. In 2014, Ridge House was structurally retrofitted to enable it to better withstand seismic stress.