Boyenga Team · Burlingame Eichlers What's mine worth?

Burlingame Eichlers  /  Photographs

Our own photographs · Burlingame

Nobody has ever illustrated this tract properly.

The written record on Burlingame's Eichlers is two archival drawings, one court decision and a single journalism piece. What it does not contain is pictures. So here are ours — and they show several things the text never says at all, including a two-storey model and at least four different roof forms on the same ridge.

A caveat on the captions

Where a house number is legible in the photograph, we give it. We do not print street names, because we have not confirmed each address against a record — and this site does not print things it has not checked. Our standing list →

Form one

The shed roof, and the band of light under it.

A pale blue-grey Eichler in Burlingame with a shed roof rising to the right, a continuous clerestory glazing band under exposed beams, a deep overhang and a three-car garage, with the hills visible behind it.
The shed roof, and what it is for. The roof plane lifts to the right, and the gap it opens under the beams is filled with glass — a clerestory band that lights the whole depth of the plan while the wall below it stays solid to the street. This is the Eichler argument in one elevation: privacy at eye level, daylight above it. Note the hills behind. Mills Estate is a ridge.
A brown board-and-batten Eichler in Burlingame, with a shed roof rising to the left, a glazed clerestory under the beams, a recessed glazed entry and a two-car garage.
Shed and clerestory, warmer. The same shed-and-clerestory idea in a warmer register, with the glazing at the entry pulled down to the ground so the front door sits in light. The roof lifts left rather than right — these plans were handed to suit the lot, which on a hillside subdivision matters more than it would on a flat one.
An olive green board-and-batten Eichler in Burlingame, seen at an angle, with a shed roof, deep overhangs, exposed beams and a low flat entry canopy.
Original siding, original mass. Vertical board-and-batten, a shed roof lifting to the right, beams running out past the wall and stopping in mid-air. The low flat canopy on the left marks the entry without enclosing it. This is a house that has not been talked out of what it is.
The same brown board-and-batten Eichler in Burlingame, photographed from a second position further along the street, showing the shed roof and clerestory from a shallower angle.
The same house, from further down the street. The same house from a shallower angle, which is the only way to see what the shed roof is actually doing: from square on it reads as a flat roof with a band of glass, and from here you can see the whole plane tilting. Two photographs of one house is not padding — it is the cheapest way to show a roof form that a single elevation flattens.

Form two

The gable, used once, over the door.

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 taupe Eichler in Burlingame, with a steep gabled entry canopy over a glazed entry court, a second gable visible through the glass, and a flat roof running off to both sides.
The double gable. Look through the glass: there is a second gable inside the first. The outer roof lifts over a glazed entry court, the inner one covers the house behind it, and the flat roof runs away level on both sides. This is the late Claude Oakland vocabulary doing the thing it was invented for — making a front door out of a wall that is otherwise deliberately blind.
A charcoal grey Eichler in Burlingame with a steeply gabled entry canopy lined in warm timber, a flat roof with clerestory glazing to the right, a two-car garage and mature Japanese maples.
The soffit is the whole trick. From the street you are looking at the underside of the gable, lined in warm timber against a dark body — which is why a house this severe does not read as cold. The roof plane you can see here is the ceiling you see inside. There is no attic between them.

Form three

And one that folds twice.

A charcoal Eichler in Burlingame, with rust-red fascia and a roof that rises to a peak, falls, and rises to a second peak above an open entry court you can see straight through.
The roof that folds twice. Up to a peak, down, up to a second peak, down again. Seen square-on from the street this is as close to a folded plate as a house gets, and it is the form Eichler Network's one published reference to a Burlingame folded-plate roofline most plausibly describes. The entry is a pass-through — roofed, open at both ends, with the front door set back inside it.

This is the photograph that matters most on this site. Eichler Network's account of the late Eichlers contains one published reference to a folded-plate roofline, and it is in Burlingame — a single sentence, with no photograph attached. We cannot prove this is the house it means. We can say that a roof which rises, falls, rises and falls again across its own front elevation is the most plausible thing that sentence was describing. The roof form →

And most of the tract

The flat deck, which is the majority and the point.

A taupe flat-roofed Eichler in Burlingame with a continuous clerestory band, a red front door and a three-car garage.
The baseline. No gable, no shed, no drama — a level roof, a clerestory band, a blind wall and a red door. Most of the tract looks more like this than like the photographs above, and it is worth seeing so the special ones read as special. The clerestory is doing all the work.

We are showing this one deliberately. A site that only published the dramatic roofs would give you a false picture of the neighbourhood and set you up for disappointment on the drive. Most of Mills Estate is a level fascia, a clerestory band and a blind wall — which is a very good thing to be, and is the baseline the gables are an exception to.

Form four, and the surprise

A two-storey Eichler that nobody has written about.

A cream-painted two-storey Eichler in Burlingame, with stacked vertical-boarded volumes, a clerestory band on the upper floor, a shed roof over an open carport with a lamp post, and a walled entry court to the left.
A two-storey Eichler, in Burlingame. Nothing in the published record on this tract mentions two-storey models, which makes this photograph evidence rather than decoration. Note what it does not do: it does not put a bedroom over the living room and call it a day. The upper volume is stepped back and broken into boxes, the clerestory band carries round it, and the whole upper floor sits behind a low shed roof over an open carport — so from the kerb the house still reads horizontal.

Two-storey Eichlers exist elsewhere — the first split-levels for sloping lots date to 1951–52, and there are two-storey row houses at Diamond Heights from 1962. Nothing in the published record puts one in Mills Estate. So this is not us illustrating a known fact; it is us finding one. How many there are, and which plan it is, we do not know. What four floor areas can and cannot tell you →

More gables, all different

The same three components, arranged four ways.

A grey Eichler in Burlingame, with a level flat roof and clerestory band across the front and a glazed gable rising behind it, an olive tree, a two-car garage and a brick-edged path.
The gable, set back. Here the gable sits behind the flat roof line rather than over the entry, so it reads as a lit room beyond rather than as a porch. Same components, different arrangement — which is the clearest sign this tract was not built from a single plan.
A cream Eichler in Burlingame with a glazed gable rising behind a level clerestory band, a red front door, two timber garage doors, and a gravel garden of clipped shrubs and columnar conifers.
The same plan, landscaped completely differently. Compare it to the same plan kept with a lawn. Gravel, clipped forms and columnar conifers — a garden doing what the architecture does, which is repeat a few simple shapes at intervals. Eichlers take this kind of planting better than almost any other tract house.
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.
A dark-stained Eichler in Burlingame with mahogany garage doors, a steep gable over the entry glazed on its end and finished in warm timber, a shingled gable roof, and Japanese maples either side.
The warm register. Same gabled-entry idea as the pale houses, read entirely differently because the body is stained rather than painted — the timber soffit under the gable and the doors below it are the same material family, so the gable looks carved out of the house rather than added to it. The shingled gable is a later covering; the flat roof either side of it is the original construction.

Gable over the entry, gable set back behind the roof line, asymmetric gable on projecting beams, gable folded twice. If this tract had been built from one plan you would not get four answers.

And the thing you can walk through

The open carport, which is really a hole cut in the house.

A brown board-and-batten Eichler in Burlingame, with a flat roof on exposed beams, a completely open carport running through to a planted courtyard, and an aggregate driveway edged in brick.
You can see straight through the house. The carport is open at both ends and the far end is planted, so from the street you are looking past the building into a garden. That is the Eichler move in its purest form: a solid wall to the road, and one deliberate hole cut through it. The brick-edged aggregate drive is period, and worth keeping.

Sixty years of garden

The planting is half of what you are buying.

A taupe Eichler in Burlingame with a shed roof lifting to the right under a clerestory band, a deep overhang, a recessed timber front door and a large crape myrtle in the front garden.
Sixty years of tree. The house is the shed-and-clerestory type again, but the point here is the planting: a crape myrtle this size is not landscaping, it is the age of the neighbourhood made visible. Mills Estate went up in 1964–65 and the gardens have had every year since.

The ridge, visible for once

Look past the house.

A grey Eichler in Burlingame, with a shed roof rising to the right, a clerestory band, a coral-painted front door beside a stacked-stone wall, a paver-and-gravel path, and a mid-century apartment building visible on the ridge above.
Look past the house. Those are apartments on the ridge above, which is the clearest single image on this site of what Mills Estate actually is: a hillside subdivision with development stacked up the slope behind it. Down at the house: a coral door against a stacked-stone wall, and a clerestory band running the full width under the lifted roof.

Every other frame on this page could be almost any flat Peninsula Eichler tract. This one could not. Mills Estate sits on a hillside subdivided in 1954, with development running up the slope behind it — which is why drainage, retaining and lot geometry vary so much more here than in Foster City, and why the slab conversation is different in this tract.

And one that breaks the rule

Somebody painted the fascia turquoise.

A white-painted brick Eichler in Burlingame with the roof fascia and projecting beam ends painted turquoise, two mahogany garage doors, a red front door with a decorative screen, and a palm tree on the lawn.
The fascia, painted. Every other house on this page keeps the roof edge quiet. This one paints it turquoise — fascia, beam ends and all — and the effect is to draw the horizontal line rather than let it disappear. Add white painted brick, mahogany doors and a red screen door, and you have the period colour argument in one elevation. Whether you love it is not the point; it shows how much the fascia carries.

We have spent this whole site arguing that the flat fascia board is the proportion of the house — that thickening it when you insulate the roof is the real cost of comfort. Here is the same argument from the other direction: paint that line a colour and it stops receding and starts leading. Whether it is to your taste is beside the point. It is the clearest demonstration available of how much work that one board does. The fascia problem →

What the photographs establish

Three things the written record does not.

That the tract is not uniform. Flat deck, shed, four different gables and a two-storey. Nobody has published a plan schedule for Mills Estate, so this is currently the only evidence anywhere of how many models were built here — and the answer is plainly a lot more than one. Why that matters →

That the clerestory is the constant. Whatever the roof does, there is a band of glass under the beams and a solid wall below it. That is the device the whole architecture rests on, and it survives in every house we photographed.

That the streetscape is mixed. Look at the neighbours at the edges of these frames. Eichler bought lots inside an existing 1954 subdivision rather than laying out his own streets, so on most of these roads an Eichler has conventional 1950s hillside houses beside it. Telling them apart →

All photographs © Boyenga Team. We do not use other people's photography of private houses on this site, which is why this page did not exist until we had shot it ourselves. Our rules →

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Can you place these houses?

If you recognise a street — or if you own one of them and would like it credited, captioned differently, or taken down — tell us and we will do it the same day.