Lost Eichlers of New York

Outside of family and friends, no one seemed to take notice when Joseph and Norma Goodman's real estate transaction cleared escrow in December. After all, could there really be anything unusual about the sale of a 40-year-old Eichler home by a pair of elderly owners looking to downsize in retirement?

We think so. Fully realized, the Goodmans' move is the kind of news that can send shock waves from coast to coast—because the Eichler property in question stands in New York state, 3,000 miles from the nearest Eichler subdivision; and the Goodmans themselves are the last original owners of one of only a handful of Eichler homes ever built outside of California.

A myth has come to life; there are Eichlers—all three of them—in the heart of New York state. Built by Eichler Homes as the first phase of a planned 216-home subdivision, the three are now relics of the company's aborted 1962 expansion east, in a town once known as Spring Valley, 45 minutes north of New York City.

"In the beginning, people either loved our house or hated it," recalled Norma Goodman, whose recent departure with husband Joseph to an apartment a few miles away concluded the couple's 37 years together under the Eichler roof. "They didn't know what to think of this kind of place."

"Eichler brought a very strange reputation with him in 1962, in that people hadn't seen these kinds of houses here before. It was rather strange," added Joseph Goodman, a retired research microbiologist. "I don't think folks were intrigued by the houses. In fact, they were put off by them. There didn't seem to be any concern at all about what Eichler had done on the West Coast. It didn't make much of a dent at all."

Reinforcing Goodman's claim, the New York Herald Tribune's six-column-wide banner headline that summer—"California Modern Invades Rockland County"—seemed to signal an alien takeover; on the other hand, the exposé that followed took a supportive stand on builder Joe Eichler's proposed Dexter Park development, hoping that his arrival would positively affect, what the article termed, a "wasteland" of Colonial and contemporary homebuilding in the New York area.

"It is commonplace," the account boldly asserted, "that New York, sophisticated center of art, business, and culture, suffers from unimaginative home design that was architecturally and technologically obsolete decades ago...If anyone is to break the stolid conservatism of house designs in developments here, it is hard to think of better reformers than the Eichlers from California."

Presumably catering to the growing numbers of "artistic" and young professionals looking to exit the city over rising costs, overcrowdedness, and escalating strife, Eichler secured 140 acres in Rockland County, whose undeveloped, wooded terrain was a natural complement for his homes' indoor-outdoor persona. "There was nothing but woods all around, just acres of pristine woods," recalled Carmine Caponigro, another of the three original owners. "When we first moved there, we used to hear guns go off, because hunting was still allowed in the neighborhood. But our home's design sure fit the topography. It melded with the trees, and was beautiful."

Joe Eichler's return to New York, the roots of his raising, was met with mixed reception in the Bay Area, where a shift towards high-risk urban construction, including high-rise buildings, had become the critical focus of his company's West Coast operation.

"We thought it was really exciting that Eichler was expanding into the New York market," recalled Kinji Imada, then a young architect in the office of Claude Oakland, whose firm, together with Jones and Emmons, provided the designs for the first East Coast residences. "It was at a time of great growth for the company, and there was a great deal of optimism."

Maintaining that spirit of optimism among his own staff, even in trying times, was a strong suit of Joe Eichler. However, he had his in-house challengers; and Ned Eichler, Joe's son and, in the early '60s, executive vice-president of the company, was perhaps the most vocal. Ned was often opposed to projects that diverted Eichler Homes from the role that built it into a profitable, well-oiled machine: residential construction based around its original Peninsula hub. He saw the East Coast move, not unlike the high-rise operation and even the company's earlier Southern California departure, as simply another distraction.