Joseph Leopold Eichler (June 25, 1900 – July 1, 1974) was a 20th-century post-war American real estate developer known for developing distinctive residential subdivisions of Mid-century modern style tract housing in California. 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.
Biography
Joseph Leopold Eichler was born on June 25, 1900, in New York City, and raised around Sutton Place, Manhattan, where his father and mother ran a small toy store, and in The Bronx. His father was Austrian and his mother was German, and he was raised traditional Jewish. Eichler attended New York University (NYU) and earned a business degree.
In 1925, the Eichler family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, in order to work in the Moncharsh family wholesale butter and egg business Nye and Nisson, Inc, which closed by the mid-1940s. Nye & Nissen was found, by the government, to be selling eggs that were outdated or incorrectly graded. Abe Moncharsh, Joe's brother-in-law, served six months to a year in jail.
By 1943, and until 1946, Joe's Peninsula Farmyard, a retail store, in Burlingame, California, specialized in poultry and eggs.
In 1943, Eichler rented the Sidney Bazett House in Hillsborough, California, a Usonian-style home built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Living in the Bazett home inspired Eichler to become a residential real estate developer of Modernist homes.
Eichler Homes
Between 1949 and 1966, 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. Later, other firms worked with Eichler's company to build similar houses. Together, they all came to be known as Eichlers. 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.
Joseph Eichler was a social visionary who 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 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
According to his son, Eichler was inspired by a short period of time when the family lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home in Hillsborough. Eichler was attracted to the style and decided to try to produce similar designs. Joseph Eichler used well-known architects to design both the site plans and the homes themselves. He hired the respected architect and Wright disciple of sorts Robert Anshen of Anshen & Allen to design the initial Eichlers, and the first prototypes were built in 1949. In later years, Eichler built homes that were designed by other architects including 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 examples 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 home 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 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 (i.e., street-facing) windows; instead house fronts have either small, ceiling-level windows or small, rectangular windows with frosted glass. Many other architectural designs have large windows on all front-facing rooms.