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They Like Eich: How Midcentury House Designer Joseph Eichler Made a Comeback

Mention Eichler during a dinner party in the Bay Area, and you'll find at least one enthusiast. Type "Eichler home" into a search engine and you'll see several realtors exclusively selling Eichler houses. If you ask around, you can find seminars, tours, and forums dedicated to Joseph Eichler. There's a coffee table book about him, as well as a short film called People in Glass Houses. In the past few years, the Bay Area real estate market has seen midcentury modern aficionados and homebuyers lining up for a chance to buy an Eichler.

"Their design is so distinctive," says Paul Adamson, architect and author of Eichler: Modernism Builds the American Dream. "The Eichlers stand apart, so new buyers, many of whom are more design-savvy than their parents, are seeking them out." In response to this demand, some enterprising California brokers and developers have even started to build more Eichlers.

What's behind the Eichler resurgence? >>