Eichler

Today the first rains of the season arrived. It poured heavily and wetly for about four hours, which is longer than the heavy downpours usually last around here. Nevertheless I ventured out into it, and I was far from the only one, to the local history museum for an evening talk about Eichlers.

No veteran residents in Silicon Valley need to be told what that means. An Eichler is a home built by the developer Joseph Eichler, who in the 1950s-70s was one of the many builders busy turning the local orchards into tract housing developments. Eichlers came in various models, but they all had a strong family resemblance, and until the imitations ("Like-lers") came along, looked like nothing else for sale in the middle-class housing market.

For one thing, they were built in post-and-beam construction, with no load-bearing walls. That meant those walls could be light or intermittent or even made of glass. The resultant opening up to the outside (many Eichlers came with courtyards or atria) and the Prairie School-like expansiveness of the beam-driven construction is what made Eichlers feel like "Frank Lloyd Wright for the masses," more effectively than Wright's own Usonian houses.

Eichlers are easily recognizable from the outside by their beam ends, grooved wood on the facades, and low-slung roof rises. To this day there are whole blocks in this area with nothing but Eichlers.

The speaker was a real estate agent who specializes in Eichlers. He talked a lot about maintaining sale value and on remodeling to update Eichlers (original construction was a bit shoddy) while keeping the mid-20C spirit of the original. Most of the audience were Eichler owners concerned about whether their neighbors were going to build second stories. I grew up in an Eichler but haven't lived in one for many years; I may have been the only person there whose primary interest was in architecture as an art form. Nevertheless when I asked a question along those lines, the speaker proved to be well-informed.

I learned something of the history of Eichlers, both the firm and the style of houses; and where exactly they are. I learned that the realtor keeps maps of Eichler developments, such as this one of my town; my family's Eichler was in Fairbrae Addition, the big red blotch in the middle of the map. Here, this is a typical Eichler.