MCM Rarity a Market Sparkler

'Down in the Valley, valley so slow…sits the sweetest, rare mod home by a near-forgotten pro.'

It's a home worthy of that age-old folk song, but not nearly as timeworn. It's not in the Silicon Valley either, home to thousands of mid-century modern dwellings, but rather is a rare example of the genre in the San Joaquin Valley city of Stockton.

"It's super cool," declares Justin Belcher, realtor for the luscious listing at 7714 Parkwoods Drive in the Lincoln Village portion of this Delta burg. Belcher listed the four-bed, three-bath for its first-ever offering recently at $699,000.

"They built it in '65," he said of the owners, its longtime residents. "Everything's pretty original. It's in great condition."

Stockton was a third of its current size in the mid-'60s when Burlingame architect Robert Blunk went there to design a home much different than the cottages and ranch houses more common to the nation's salad bowl.

Blunk, who passed away in 2007, founded the longstanding firm now known as Demattei Wong Architecture in 1958 during a career that included a joint effort with architect Vincent Raney to design the Hyatt Music Theatre in Burlingame, a Streamline Moderne gem that closed in 2008 but still stands.

"I've had a lot of [clients], they love that style, and they just wait and wait and wait and then they throw in the towel and say, 'OK, we'll get something else,'" Belcher said of the difficulty in finding MCM design down in the valley.

Stockton residents still may have been feeling the sting of losing the Lincoln Highway to realignment in 1927 when city leaders named and planned Lincoln Village at what was then the north end of town. Once Interstate 5 was built through the town in the early '70s, it helped spur considerably more homebuilding further north.