Burlingame Eichlers / Atriums
A per-house question
Some of these houses have one. Some do not.
In most late Eichler tracts the atrium is close to universal. In Mills Estate it is not: we can document an enclosed atrium of about 428 square feet on Frontera Way, and a house on Mariposa Court sold explicitly as a non-atrium plan. Which yours is changes both how it lives and what it is worth.
2999 Frontera Way
428
sq ft of enclosed atrium, on a 2,139 sq ft house
7 Mariposa Court
None
Marketed as a “unique non-atrium floorplan”
Origins · and a correction
Bob Anshen proposed it, and named it.
The atrium is credited on a great many Eichler pages — ours among them — to Jones & Emmons, usually dated 1957–58. The best available account credits Bob Anshen of Anshen & Allen, who both proposed the idea and gave it the name, on two eyewitness accounts: Ned Eichler and a draftsman who was there.
There were precedents before the official debut. Plan 37, August 1951, at Lindenwood in Atherton had an eleven-foot-square court. Plans E-5 and E-8, 1956, in the San Mateo Highlands, had surrounded courtyards — which is a nice connection for anyone comparing the two tracts. Terra Linda and Faircourt had large recessed forecourts.
It debuted properly in 1957–58 and Eichler made it standard on most houses from 1958. The rest of our corrections →
By the time Burlingame was built, the atrium had matured. At Balboa Highlands in 1962–64 atriums were typically about four hundred square feet inside houses of two thousand to two and a half thousand — which brackets the 428 square feet on Frontera Way almost exactly.
Around 1963 a variant arrived: the gallery, an atrium with a roof over it and skylights, trading daylight and open air for usable interior area and bigger bedrooms. We have not found a documented gallery plan in Mills Estate, but the tract is the right date for one and we would not be surprised.
What it does to the number
The atrium is the most misread square footage in an Eichler.
An atrium is open to the sky and unconditioned. Depending on how a house was measured and who did the measuring, it may or may not be inside the square footage you are quoted. On a 2,139 square foot house, a 428 square foot atrium is a fifth of the number.
That is not an accounting quibble. Two Mills Estate houses quoted at the same square footage can differ by four hundred feet of actual heated room, and a portal estimate will not know the difference.
Our position when we value one of these: measure the conditioned area and the atrium separately, and say which is which. An atrium is worth real money — it is the single feature buyers who want an Eichler most often name — but it is not worth the same per foot as a bedroom, and pretending otherwise produces a number that will not survive an appraisal.