1. Joseph Leopold Eichler 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.
15 Facts About Joseph Eichler
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Joseph Eichler was one of the influential advocates of bringing modern architecture from custom residences and large corporate buildings to general public availability.
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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.
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Joseph Eichler's father was Austrian and his mother was German, and he was raised traditional Jewish.
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In 1925, the Joseph 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.
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In 1943, Joseph Eichler rented the Sidney Bazett House in Hillsborough, California, a Usonian-style house built by Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Joseph Eichler was a social visionary who commissioned designs primarily for middle-class Americans.
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Joseph Eichler established a non-discrimination policy and offered homes for sale to anyone of any religion or race.
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Joseph Eichler was attracted to the style and decided to try to produce similar designs.
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Joseph Eichler used well-known architects to design both the site plans and the houses themselves.
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Joseph Eichler houses 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 made famous by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
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Joseph Eichler houses were airy and modern in comparison to most of the mass-produced, middle-class, postwar houses built in the 1950s.
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The Northern California Joseph Eichler Homes are predominantly in San Francisco, Marin County, Sacramento, the East Bay towns of Walnut Creek, Castro Valley, Concord, Oakland, and the San Francisco Peninsula towns of San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and San Jose.
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Joseph Eichler built semi-custom designs for individual clients by commission.
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Joseph Eichler developed the suburban and trendsetting co-op communities Pomeroy Green and Pomeroy West in Santa Clara.