Joseph Eichler

Joseph Eichler (1900–1974) was a 20th-century post-war U.S. American real estate developer known for developing distinctive residential subdivisions of Mid-Century modern style tract housing in California, United States. He was one of the influential advocates of bringing modern architecture from custom residences and large corporate buildings to general public availability. His company and developments remain in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles.^[1]

Eichler Homes

Between 1950 and 1974, Joseph Eichler's company, Eichler Homes, built over 11,000 homes in nine communities in Northern California and homes in three communities in Southern California. They all came to be known as Eichlers or an Eichler. During this period, Eichler became one of the nation's most influential builders of modern homes. The largest contiguous Eichler Homes development is 'The Highlands' in San Mateo, built between 1956 and 1964.

Eichler Homes – Foster Residence, Granada Hills

Unlike many developers of the post war housing boom, Joseph Eichler was a social visionary and commissioned designs primarily for middle-class Americans. One of his stated aims was to construct inclusive and diverse planned communities, ideally featuring integrated parks and community centers. Eichler, unlike most builders at the time, established a non-discrimination policy and offered homes for sale to anyone of any religion or race. In 1958, he resigned from the National Association of Home Builders when they refused to support a non-discrimination policy.

Design

Joseph Eichler used well-known architects to design both the site plans and the homes themselves. He hired the respected architect and Wright disciple Robert Anshen of Anshen & Allen to design the initial Eichlers, and the first prototypes were built in 1949. In later years, other Eichler Homes by other architects were built including those designed by: the San Francisco firm Claude Oakland & Associates; and the Los Angeles firms of Jones & Emmons, A. Quincy Jones, and Raphael Soriano.

Eichler homes are from a branch of Modernist architecture that has come to be known as "California Modern," and typically feature glass walls, post-and-beam construction, and open floorplans in a style indebted to Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Eichler Homes exteriors featured flat and/or low-sloping A-Framed roofs, vertical 2-inch pattern wood siding, and spartan facades with clean geometric lines. One of Eichler's signature concepts was to "Bring the Outside In," achieved via skylights and floor-to-ceiling glass windows with glass transoms looking out on protected and private outdoor rooms, patios, atriums, gardens, and swimming pools. Also of note is that most Eichler homes feature few, if any, front-facing (that is, street-facing) windows, with those that do exist being either small ceiling level windows or small rectangular windows with frosted glass which is contrary to most other architectural designs which have almost all front rooms featuring large windows.

The interiors had numerous unorthodox and innovative features including: exposed post-and-beam construction; tongue and groove decking for the ceilings following the roofline; concrete slab floors with integral radiant heating; lauan ( Philippine mahogany ) paneling; sliding doors for rooms, closets, and cabinets; and a standard second bathroom located in the master bedroom. Later models introduced the famous Eichler entry atriums, an open-air enclosed entrance foyer designed to further advance the Eichler concept of integrating outdoor and indoor spaces.

Eichler homes were airy and modern in comparison to most of the mass-produced, middle-class, postwar homes being built in the 1950s. At first potential home buyers, many of whom were war-weary ex-servicemen and women seeking convention rather than innovation, were resistant to the innovative homes. Eichler also faced competition from other developers who used stylistic elements of Eichler homes in diluted and more conventional designs, later called "Eichleresque." Eichler Homes never achieved large profits for Joseph Eichler.

In his biography by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs credited living in an "Eichler Home" when growing up as the main inspiration for developing an aesthetic sensibility for the modernist and for the simple.^[2] That Steve Jobs lived in an Eichler was recently disproven by researchers at the Eichler Network, who discovered and confirmed that Jobs' boyhood home was a similarly-styled mid-century modern by another builder.

Projects

The Northern California Eichler Homes are predominantly in San Francisco, Marin County, Sacramento, the East Bay towns of Walnut Creek, Concord, Oakland, Castro Valley, and the San Francisco Peninsula towns of San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and San Jose. The Southern California Eichler Homes developments are in Thousand Oaks, Granada Hills, and Orange.

Eichler Homes neighborhoods

• Lucas Valley and Marinwood – Marin County, California.
• The Terra Linda section – San Rafael, California.
• The Highlands – San Mateo, California.
• Atherwood – Redwood City, California.
• Monta Loma Neighborhood – Mountain View, California^[3]
• Midtown – South Palo Alto Palo Alto, California, with many Eichler Homes, a Swim and Tennis Club called "Eichler" and an Eichler Tract Community Association and Aquatic Facility called "Greenmeadow."
• Fairgrove Tract – Cupertino, California has 229 homes built in 1960–1961.
• Fairwood, Fairbrae, and Fairbrae addition – Sunnyvale, California have 400+ homes built between 1958–1961.
• Fairglen Tract in the Willow Glen neighborhood – San Jose, California.
• Concord, California – Two Eichler tracts in this city in the east San Francisco Bay Area.
• Rancho San Miguel in Walnut Creek, California – A neighborhood with more than 300 Eichler homes.
• Greenridge Road area of Castro Valley, California has a large development of Eichler homes.^[4]
• South Land Park and South Land Park Hills are neighborhoods in Sacramento, California, with many Eichler homes and a street named Eichler Street.
• Thousand Oaks, California – Eichler community in the Conejo Valley.
• Granada Hills, California – Eichler community in the San Fernando Valley; its "Foster Residence" is a designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
• Fairhaven – Orange, California, with 140 Eichler homes.
• Pomeroy West – Santa Clara, California, with 133 Eichler homes.
• Diamond Heights neighborhood - San Francisco, California.

Other projects

Joseph Eichler also built semi-custom designs for individual clients by commission, such as three in Chestnut Ridge, New York. As a result of soaring land prices in the mid-1960s urban redevelopment projects became popular, and Eichler began building low- and high-rise projects in San Francisco's Western Addition and Hunters Point-Bayview districts, luxury high-rises and clustered housing on Russian Hill and Diamond Heights. He also developed the suburban and trendsetting co-op communities Pomeroy Green and Pomeroy West in Santa Clara. These large projects began to overextend the company, and by the mid-1960s, Eichler Homes was in financial distress. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1967.

People who grew up in Eichler homes

Although Steve Jobs said he grew up in an Eichler home and stated "that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market",^[5] he had actually lived in an Eichler competitor's structure in Mountain View, California.^[6] Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak grew up in an Eichler home in Sunnyvale, California.^[6]

Media

• The Parr family home in the Pixar animated feature The Incredibles appears to be an Alexander home—another type of tract-home design similar to Eichlers.
• Eichler houses in Orange, California, were used to project a very stylistic look in the 2006 independent film Another Gay Movie.
• The neighborhood seen in the 2008 film Speed Racer includes a number of digitally re-created Eichler houses.
• The 2010 film What Better Place, by Chapman University student Hiyam Abousaid, was shot entirely in an Eichler home in Orange, California.
• The Palo Alto Facebook house in the 2010 film The Social Network appears to be an Eichler.

References

Sources

• Adamson, Paul; Marty Arbunich, Ernest Braun (photographer) (2002). Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith Publishers. ISBN 1-58685-184-5.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Adamson, Paul (March 2001). "California modernism and the Eichler homes". The Journal of Architecture 6 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1080/13602360010024804. 
• Ditto, Jerry; Lanning Stern, Marvin Wax (photographer) (1995). Design for Living: Eichler Homes. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-0846-7.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Jacobs, Karrie (May 15, 2005). "Saving the Tract House". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved December 26, 2009. 
• "Jobs' 'Likeler' No Eichler". Eichler Network. Feb 15, 2012. Retrieved Feb 26, 2012. 

External links

• CA Modern Magazine from the Eichler Network, OCLC 69019631
• Flickr Group: Eichler Homes photographs
• Eichler Talk—Community of Eichler Homeowners
• Balboa Highlands—Eichlers in Los Angeles, California
• Eichler Design—homeowner's personal website
• David Eichler Photography; Professional photographer's website featuring numerous examples of Eichler Home exteriors and interiors