What is a late Eichler?

Broadly, a house from the last stretch of Eichler's run, roughly 1962 to 1974. They are markedly larger than 1950s Eichlers — around 2,000 to 2,600 square feet against 1,050 to 1,250 at the start — with more complex roof forms, more elaborate entry sequences, four and five bedrooms, and drywall where the earlier houses had Philippine mahogany. Burlingame's Mills Estate, built 1963–65, is late Eichler work.

Why do later Eichlers have drywall instead of mahogany panelling?

The building code. Quarter-inch Philippine mahogany veneer was the Eichler signature finish, and by the early to mid 1960s it was giving way to sheet rock for cost and fire-code reasons. A long-serving Eichler employee put it plainly: Joe Eichler loved that panelling and would never have stopped using it if code changes had not forced him to.

Architecture · 1962–1967

Bigger, taller, and drywalled by the fire code.

If your mental picture of an Eichler is a low flat-roofed three-bedroom with mahogany walls, that is a 1950s house. Burlingame's are a decade later and a different product: four and five bedrooms, over two thousand square feet, roofs that do something, and — often — painted wallboard where the panelling used to be.

Roughly double in fifteen years

1950 · AA-1, Sunnyvale

1,044

sq ft · 3 bed / 1 bath · $9,500

1965 · 1775 Hunt Dr

2,440

sq ft · 4 bed / 2.5 bath

A taupe Eichler in Burlingame, with a flat roof, a continuous clerestory band the full width of the front, a glazed gable rising over the centre, and a two-car garage. — **The gable as an event.** Everything here is horizontal: the fascia, the clerestory band, the garage doors, the kerb. Then one gable lifts over the centre and is glazed on its end, so it reads as light rather than as mass. Take the gable away and this is a plain flat-roofed Eichler. That is the point — the whole composition is one interruption in a level line.

A white-rendered Eichler in Burlingame, with a dramatic asymmetric gable carried on exposed beams over the entry, a timber garage door, and a flat roof running away on both sides. — **The asymmetric gable.** The two slopes are not the same length, and the **beam ends project straight through and stop in mid-air**, so the structure is on show rather than wrapped up. Eichler Network records an asymmetrical roofline as one of the late-period experiments — alongside the folded plate and the clipped gable. This is what one looks like.

The size curve

Every figure here is from a specific house or a specific plan.

Year	House or plan	Size	Where
1949	Sunnymount Gardens	1,230 sq ft	3 bed / 1.5 bath
1950	AA-1 prototype	1,044 sq ft	Sunnyvale, sold at $9,500
c.1959–60	Plan 1454	1,822 sq ft	San Mateo Highlands, from the brochure
1962–64	Balboa Highlands, all models	~2,000–2,500 sq ft	Including a ~400 sq ft atrium
1964	2999 Frontera Way	2,139 sq ft	Burlingame, plus a 428 sq ft atrium
1965	1775 Hunt Dr	2,440 sq ft	Burlingame
1969–70s	Walnut Grove, Walnut Creek	2,305–2,500 sq ft	Claude Oakland, 34 homes

Two caveats that matter. Late figures often include the atrium, so like-for-like enclosed area grew less than the headline suggests. And not every late plan was large — a 1965 gallery model in Concord is 1,577 square feet. The trend is real; the rule is not absolute.

What actually changed

Six things, and only some of them are visible from the kerb.

The panelling went

Quarter-inch Philippine mahogany, veneered both sides, was the signature interior finish. By the early 1960s it was giving way to sheet rock — cost, and fire code. A twenty-five-year Eichler employee: “Joe Eichler really loved that wood panelling, and he would have never stopped using it if he hadn't been forced to by changes to the building code.” The Harschel house at 8 Mariposa Court is reported to have kept its mahogany, so this was a transition, not a clean switch.

The roofs got ambitious

Flat and low-slope gable gave way to steeper gables, A-frames, and forms chosen for drama at the entry. One Burlingame design used a folded plate over the entry. Ceiling heights rose — at Strawberry Point in Marin, reportedly to eighteen feet. On the folded plate →

Roof covering changed with the shape

Flat Eichlers were built-up tar and gravel over what one account calls an almost useless half-inch of fibreglass. Steep late models moved to shingles — one late brochure specifies cedar shake over a two-inch redwood or cedar roof.

Insulation improved

Late tracts came with fibreglass in roofs and exterior walls, not just the roof, and with utilities underground.

The atrium matured

Introduced 1957–58 and standard on most houses from 1958. By the mid-1960s atriums ran to about four hundred square feet, and the gallery — a roofed atrium with skylights — arrived around 1963. On atriums here →

The frame did not change

Post and beam, exposed two-by-eight tongue-and-groove decking as the ceiling, glass where there is no post. That is constant from 1949 to the end. What changed is the geometry sitting on it.

Two things people say about late Eichlers that are not true

“All Eichlers have radiant heat.” Not in the late Southern California work. Balboa Highlands, 1962–64, used forced air and air conditioning, which its own preservation plan contrasts with Northern California practice. The same tract had steel sash windows rather than the aluminium standard. Northern California, including Burlingame, stayed with radiant slabs and aluminium sliders — but the blanket claim is false.

“Jones & Emmons invented the atrium.” The best account credits Bob Anshen, of Anshen & Allen, who both proposed it and named it, on two eyewitness accounts. We repeat this correction because it appears on a great many Eichler sites, and has appeared on ours. The rest of the corrections →

The end of the company

Why late Eichlers are the last Eichlers.

Eichler Homes went public in 1961 and at the same moment moved into capital-intensive urban projects — Laguna Heights in the Western Addition, and The Summit at 999 Green Street on Russian Hill, which opened in 1964 with Joe and Lillian Eichler in the penthouse.

Tract houses are sold one at a time as they finish. A high-rise has to be completed entirely before a single unit earns anything. The Summit overran by about two million dollars. Laguna Heights could not break even at full occupancy. Geneva Towers ran a deficit near a million.

In 1966 Eichler refused his son Ned's recommendation to file Chapter 11 — he considered bankruptcy shameful — had a heart attack that spring, and in May sold controlling interest to Charles Parr and Robert Bryson on promissory notes. Eichler Homes filed in 1967, owing something like seven thousand creditors.

He kept building, as J. L. Eichler Associates and later under other names, until his death on 1 July 1974 — roughly eleven thousand houses across about fifty California tracts.

Dates in circulation range from 1965 to 1967 for the bankruptcy. 1965 and 1966 are the years of distress and loss of control; 1967 is the filing, and is the best-supported. We have not found a docket number.