Joseph Eichler's stunning Californian property development

Joseph Eichler (1900-74) was born in New York in 1900, son of Ger­man Jewish immig­rants. He grew up in a politically liberal fam­ily who admired Pres Franklin Roosevelt, and grew to maturity in NY’s cult­urally diverse community. He began his career on Wall St and later joined the poultry business run by the family of his wife Lillian, daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants.

After the Great Depression started, more of the nation's resid­ential mortgages were in default, with foreclosures booming in the early 1930s. In an attempt to revive the economy, in­crease employment in the const­ruct­ion industry, and make home owner­ship widely available to the American public, the federal government introduced a series of programmes. The U.S appraisal indus­try opposed the mixing of the races, which it believed would cause the decline of both the human race and of property values. Appraisers introduced their property rating sys­tem, ranking properties, blocks and even whole neighbourhoods:
A/green – new successful development, professionals, no blacks 
B/blue – some Jewish home owners but the development would remain stable 
C/yellow – declining development 
D/red – some black home owners, low income earners, declining value. 

D areas’ properties were redlined, or marked as locations in which no loans should be made for either purchasing or upgrading prop­ert­ies. Redlining, along with similarly rac­ist policies, deepened as suburb­an development swelled in the post-WW2 era.

Joseph, Lillian and their two sons, Richard and Edward, reloc­ated to California in 1940. There they rented a Frank Lloyd Wright home, called the Bazett House in Hillsborough Cal and by the mid-1940s, Eichler was in­trigued by architect Lloyd Wright’s modernism.

Although not an architect himself, Eichler’s name became identified with mid-century, single-family, modern homes that helped define suburban Los Angeles and San Fran­cisco. Hiring progressive archit­ects in San Francisco, Eichler realised his developer dream. As regional arch­itecture de­signed for the Bay Area's benign climate, his designs grab­bed attent­ion: streamlined kitchen built ins, multi-purpose room adjacent to the kitchen, radiant-heated floors, wood panelling, gabled ceilings, floor-to-ceiling glass walls and the classic atrium that melded indoor-outdoor living. With the post-and-beam construction and open floor plans de­signed around the central atrium, the “Eich­l­ers” were houses that remained very much in demand by design buffs.

He built c11,000 homes. His Northern Californian houses were in Marin county, East Bay, San Mateo county, Palo Alto, Sunny­vale, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacram­ento. His three small communit­ies in Southern Cal­if­ornia were in Orange, Thousand Oaks and Granada Hills. In total, these houses refl­ected the beauty and uniqueness of his design and the integ­rity of the builder behind it, set in inclusive and diverse planned communities featuring integ­rated parks and community centres. In addition to his Californian developments, he also built 3 Eichler houses in New York.

Two-storey residence, glass wall and amazing view 

San Francisco’s Diamond Heights neighbourhood, 1965 

Kitchen with wood panelling and beamed tongue-and-groove ceilings. 

Silicon Valley, 1962 

Indoor/outdoor view

Silicon Valley

Inspired by Wright, Eich­ler created a vision that embraced modernist aesthetics. In 1949, when it was still uncommon to find merch­ant builders and archit­ects together, Eichler fell in love with building commun­ities characterised by elegant family homes and middle class afford­ability. And he refused to be swayed by assoc­iates who saw greater profits in quick designs and/or poor mat­er­ials. 

Importantly Eichler made non-discrimin­atory housing a central princ­iple of his company, launched in 1947. He remembered dis­crim­in­ation against Jews back in New York, and he believed dis­crimin­ation was still common ..and not just in hous­ing. 

Discrimination throughout the country was ram­pant and legal then, and Eichler was one of the first maj­or developers to oppose it. He was the first large-tract buil­der to sell to minorities, including building a home on his own lot for a Nat­ion­al Association for the Advancement of Coloured People lead­er. Eichler Homes quiet­ly ruled out racial restriction on its sales, noting that Asian famil­ies bought Eich­lers in 1950 and the company made its first sale to a black family in 1954. His son Ned, who joined the business in 1954, shared dad’s beliefs.

The developer re­signed from the National Association of Home Builders in 1958 when the vice president of the San Francisco branch said: "It was a generally accepted that minority races depreciate property values". There may have been no statistics to prove it, but as the repres­entative of home builders, it was the theory under which he had to operate. Eichler promptly of­fered to buy back homes from any home owners troubled by their minority neighbours.

How ironic that Calif­ornia’s Fair Housing Legislation was introduced in 1959. 

Atrium of a twin gable, 

Sunnyvale California, 1962

A triangular window was often placed between the horizontal joists and the roof, 

increasing the grandness of the large window walls.

An Eichler home was sold to a black family and a neighbour complained. 
So the company bought the neighbour’s home back and promptly resold it.  Palo Alto, 1954.

So Dwell magazine publicly highlighted Eich­l­er’s long com­mitment to undoing racist housing policies by selling homes to any­one who could afford it, regardless of their race, ethnicity or rel­igion. Racist housing policies con­tinued to persist, even when racist pol­ic­ies were later deem­ed illegal by leg­isl­ation.

For a while their non-discrimination policy was not broad­cast to prospective buyers and local governments; instead the build­ers quietly sold to anyone who was qualif­ied. But act­ivism on a lar­ger scale began when the Co. pushed for widespread fair housing laws in California and for the federal government; Eichler even acc­epted an invitation to testify before the U.S Civil Rights Commis­s­ion of 1960. Eichler Homes demonstrated that housing could be integ­rated without fundamentally altering the character of the sub­urbs, instigating battles with municipalities, or hurting profits. 

While housing discrimination remained across the country, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 officially illegalised housing discrim­ination; the social activism of the Eichlers had played a major role in helping such legislation to be passed. Read Prof Ocean Howell’s book, “The Merchant Crusaders: Eichler Homes and Fair Housing 1949–74” online. 

Joe Eichler passed away in 1974, at 73.