LOST EICHLERS OF NEW YORK
A homecoming, a promised land, expansion cut short
-- three relics of Eichler's derailed East Coast fling

From the pages of the Eichler Network newsletter
By Marty Arbunich

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.

While his business face in the press remained positive about New York, behind the scenes, recalled Ned, "We had some big fights about this kind of stuff for a couple years, but Joe didn't want to hear about it. To be honest, from a management point of view, New York really wasn't high on my list of things I was concerned about, and I knew it wouldn't go anywhere. It was a doomed idea from the beginning. It was always a semi-joke around the company. Everybody rolled their eyes about it."

Contributing to its fate was a string of bureaucratic snafus with the township's building department. One scrape developed over the proper course for sewage disposal, another over acceptable acreage per lot. "There was a lot of opposition to him," pointed out Joseph Goodman. "The town gave him a hard time, particularly on the zoning." In addition, the company's building superintendent, according to Ned Eichler, repeatedly was turned down for permits.

"We'd put the plans in, and they'd give us some critique that didn't make sense -- or they just wouldn't do anything," claimed Eichler. "So I asked the developer that sold us the lots: 'Do you think these guys are asking you to pay them?' We had never done that. Maybe a case of whiskey, or something like that. And the developer said, 'Of course they want you to pay them! That's standard practice here -- it's no secret anywhere.'"

Even after creatively restructuring the lot purchase price in a new contract with the developer, Eichler Homes still was unable to convert their plan into an efficient operation. Beginning in early 1962, they spent six months -- historically their houses were getting built in 45 days -- erecting the first three homes.

As delays piled up, Eichler Homes ultimately decided to pull out. Nonetheless, in the press Ned Eichler stood firm on the company's plan to rekindle the project. "There has been no decision to withdraw," he told a House & Home reporter. "The problems will be solved -- it's just a question of when." Of course that never happened; in fact, according to Eichler, the company lost $100 thousand in all, a relatively inconsequential sum for a merchant builder, even then.

Overall, Eichler Homes' cash-flow and profit picture during 1962, according to a report published in House & Home in early 1963, had been impaired by speculative projects, all in San Francisco, including the Laguna high rise and apartments, the Geneva Terrace townhouses, and a supermarket. Expenses had risen 24 percent over the previous year, yet net profit increased only four percent. The kind of risky projects that would eventually take the company down were already beginning to have an effect. Fortunately, in New York, the company cut its losses early.

Looking back, Ned Eichler dismisses the sewage, acreage, and permit issues as substantial reasoning for the termination of the company's plans for developing Dexter Park. "It's hard for me to believe that those kinds of things become a justification for failure," Eichler pointed out. "The reason the operation failed was simple. We just couldn't execute. We couldn't build the houses long distance. It took too long, and took too much money -- in a very competitive business."

"But my father, especially at that time," he continued, "was trying to do something somewhere that was new and different -- and fun, I guess you could say. I don't mean to say it was whim, but it was whatever struck him as something he wanted to do. New York was just one of them."

The three Dexter Park Eichlers, each an atrium-model design found in Bay Area subdivisions at the time, were priced near $30 thousand and sold off during the first few months of 1963. The Goodmans bought the larger, flat-topped Claude Oakland (model 94), and the Bartoluccis followed, buying the gable-roofed Jones & Emmons (1505). In May, the Caponigros -- Carmine, a young dental surgeon; Lydia, an interior designer -- discovered the smaller, 1,700-square-foot Claude Oakland (254), and fell for it.

"You got to remember, I'm a New York City boy, living in an apartment in Yonkers," Carmine confessed, his native pride still intact. "All of a sudden, we have freedom -- with our own house and backyard. It was exciting. We fell in love with the house."

The couple moved away in 1974, looking for more space for their family of five, and easier access to Carmine's New York City office. "But today we're retired, the kids are out of the house, and we have a home that's too big," Carmine added. "I'd really love to be able to move back there now."

Around the corner, now living in the Bartolucci house, are the Josephs -- television ad salesman Jerry and inventor Robin -- who, even after nearly 18 years, are still charged about their home and the embellishment they bring to it. In 1983, while the couple lived in a small apartment nearby, Robin toured 200 open houses, nearly losing her frustrated realtor in the process, before taking the plunge.

"As soon as I walked into this house, I said this is it," Robin said recently in an excited tone. "Everyone who comes here is in awe of this place -- friends, workmen, everybody. From the outside, you can't even imagine what's doing in here. It's very deceiving. As soon as people step into the atrium, a whole new world opens up."

By 1965, three years after Eichler shut down in the East, several other builders split up the Dexter Park acreage, bringing in a mixture of traditional ranch-style and contemporary designs. In the late 1980s, unincorporated Spring Valley was divided into several smaller towns. Today, the only three true Eichlers ever built outside of California -- each an anomaly year-round, and especially in winter when covered with snowfall -- huddle together on Grotke Road and adjacent Perth Avenue in the quiet village of Chestnut Ridge.

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