FAIRGLEN - SAN JOSE
Fairglen is Eichler crazy -- but its 'neighborliness' is
even more infectious, making it a great place to live

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

A first-time visitor to San Jose's Fairglen Eichler development may come away thinking the neighborhood is Eichler crazy.

During the annual 'Fairglen Eichler Home Tour,' locals on the street wear 'I Love Eichler' t-shirts, carry Eichler totes, and delve into the minutiae of cork floors, slate counters versus Corian, and the ideal shade of orange for the front door. Inside their homes, enough space-age George Nelson clocks decorate the walls -- some houses have three -- to keep the factory in business.

The neighborhood is also home to budding entrepreneurs with Eichler wares. Carmen Nicholls manufactures authentic Eichler house numbers for homeowners whose originals have failed the test of time; and Diana Rich, who runs Eichler Style, designs t-shirts and totes, Eichler bibs, coffee mugs, and more.

Scratch the surface, though, and you'll discover what really makes Fairglen special -- its neighborliness. The home tour, which is open to residents and friends, is one of the neighborhood's largest social events, but just one of many, which range from a street barbecue to artist open studios, wine tasting, and Christmas caroling.

Besides official events, which are advertised online and in the tiny neighborhood newsletter, the 'Eichler Blockhead,' there are many casual gatherings, dinners, dinner parties, Bunco games, even a weekly 'Desperate Housewives' party. Some of these events occasionally include what Fairglenner Chris Connor playfully calls 'normals,' their non-Eichler neighbors.

What brings people together initially, neighbors say, are the Eichler homes -- their pitfalls and promise, the way of life they promote, and their ethos. "It starts with the houses and the architecture," Dave Peterson says of life in Fairglen, "and it then develops."

"Somehow the Eichlers attract people who have something in common," says Tom Borsellino.

People in Fairglen love Eichlers and modern furnishings, and no one more so than Borsellino, who has lived in the neighborhood twice. But what brought him back the second time wasn't style, but substance. He missed "the type of people the houses attract," people with a wide range of interests who arrange visits not via e-mail but by ringing the bell.

"One of the things that attracts me to Eichlers is the optimism of the 1950s," Borsellino says. "It was a more neighborly time."

Fairglen, which includes more than 300 houses in three separate pockets in the Willow Glen section of San Jose, was built from 1957 to 1962. The neighborhood has no community center and no regulations. But it is tied together by formal and informal networks.

The neighborhood home tour, organized by a revolving committee of a dozen Eichler owners, attracted 250 locals last May. An online chat room allows neighbors to discuss problems, learn about modern furnishings spotted in nearby thrift stores, and stay in touch. The 'Blockhead,' published by Carmen Nicholls, publicizes happenings and announces birthdays. Eichlers-for-sale open houses always attract neighbors, who love to admire, criticize, and learn from their neighbors' homes, and chat with friends.

The result is a neighborhood that really feels like a neighborhood. Borsellino, whose work took him to Chicago between his two stays in Fairglen, says he met few neighbors in the Windy City -- even though homes all had front porches, which neo-urbanist theorists say promote friendships. And those neighbors he met proved less than stimulating. "I went an entire year," he says, "when I didn't have a single conversation that didn't end up with sports."

"Here people just drop in," says Sandra Ailio, who's lived in Fairglen for two years. She attributes some of that to friendships made on the home tour, which concludes with a barbecue. In Fairglen, Nicholls says, "People just come on in, and you end up having a glass of wine, and there's the evening."

Sandra and Juta Ailio were shopping for a home in the neighborhood when they met Dave and Lynne Peterson at one of the Eichler open houses of Loni Nagwani, an energetic Fairglenner who specializes in Eichler real estate. The Petersons almost ordered them to buy a house in the neighborhood, and then took them home for dinner.

And when newcomers finally move in, Phyllis Van Wagner is likely to greet them with a houseplant. "I'm one of the older people, and I should do that," says Van Wagner, an original homeowner whose home was one of the first in the neighborhood.

The area was still apricot and cherry orchards when Phyllis and Frank Van Wagner arrived, she remembers. Frank, who was from the East, fell in love with the Bay Area when he served in the Navy during World War II, and got IBM to transfer him to California. They loved the openness of the house, Van Wagner says, and they were impressed with Eichler's commitment to building an integrated neighborhood.

The neighborhood started out friendly, with block parties and hordes of children, 75 on their street alone, she says. "When my husband got home from work he'd drive down the block at five miles an hour."

Steve Thatcher grew up in Fairglen, left after high school, but returned, buying the family house. Other Fairglen kids do the same. "They want to hold onto that neighborhood and that feeling," he says. He remembers a neighborhood where mothers watched out for each other's children, and formed food co-ops, and where everyone knew everyone else. "It was a more communal living situation."

"It still attracts people who like to talk and get on with the neighbors," he says. "So the neighborhood still lives on in that way."

The neighborhood is still child-friendly, he says, if not as child-packed. "When we grew up," says Thatcher, who was one of five kids, "everybody had five kids. Now everybody has two." That includes Thatcher himself.

The roots of the home tour go back to the mid-1960s, when the neighborhood had its first art festival. The festival began small, with a handful of people showing their art, says Mickie Bruno, who helped run some of the festivals. Fairglen had its share of creative people, so the idea spread. "People saw it," she says, "and said 'I can do that too.'"

The festival grew in popularity. Rock and roll bands would play, folk dancers would perform in a driveway, and the late Jim Thatcher, Steve's dad, hauled in sand for a neighborhood sand castle. "It was kind of like a country fair," Bruno says. The festival got so big Sunset magazine wrote it up, and the city took notice. Officials spoke about fees, health inspections, liability. "The city required that Lloyds of London get involved," neighbor Scott Nicholls says. In 1995 the event died.

But you can't keep Fairglen down. Funds in the festival's account were turned to good use for the first neighborhood home tour in 2001.

At first, people opened their homes to show off their household collections and other hobbies, says Carmen Nicholls, Scott's wife and a member of the Fairglen Home Tour Committee. But it soon became a venue for people who wanted to show off their ho mes after remodeling.

Anyone can open their home as part of the tour, says Nagwani, who is credited by everyone as the event's prime mover. It is not necessary to be an Eichler purist. But last year's tour of five homes attracted the true fans.

Visitors admired Bill and Kim Pfahnl's high-tech kitchen remodel and enjoyed Ann and Jerry Escobar's digital before-after-and-during slide show. "We gutted this thing down to the studs to get it back to its original character," Jerry explained. "This was all purple sponge paint right here," he said about one wall.

Borsellino and wife Monika Kafka won praise for their period décor. "We weren't afraid of angles and boomerangs and amoebas, but we held the line at kitsch," Borsellino says. "No '50s for '50s sake. It's got to be architecturally significant. As much as I like pink flamingos, no pink flamingos. But I might put some in. No poodle stuff."

Borsellino, who bought his first Fairglen home in 1997, has seen significant changes in attitudes towards the homes. Back then, he says, Eichlers were selling for less than comparable non-Eichler homes a few blocks away. Authenticity was not on most buyers' minds. "Their interiors were still being whitewashed, for the most part," he says.

That, of course, has changed. Mid-century modernism has blossomed in popularity. TV shows, commercials, even the animated movie 'The Incredibles' are set in Eichlers, or Eichler-like houses, neighbor Chris Connors notes. "They're just seen as cool things," Sandra Ailio says. And they sell for more than their non-Eichler neighbors.

The change also means that Eichlers that retain their historic character sell for more than those that don't. "We told our realtor, 'Don't call us unless you find a virgin Eichler,' " says Dave Peterson.

Nagwani -- and neighbors -- know which homes in the neighborhood are most pristine, and seek out buyers attuned to preserving the Eichler aesthetic. Before Connors bought his very original Eichler, neighbors worried about its fate. "The people who live here," Borsellino says, "like Eichlers to the point where they want to maintain the integrity of the neighborhood."

But not to the point that they want to abide by design guidelines, although several neighbors have talked about establishing a local historic designation that could help prevent second-story additions and other unsavory changes.

Phyllis Van Wagner's home remains largely original, and she would like to discourage second-story additions, but she speaks for many when she says: "Here, if somebody were to tell us what we could do with our front yards, we would be very upset."

Another authentic Eichler is the Peterson home, which has become "notorious, in a good sort of way," Juta Ailio says, for its commitment to all things mid-century, starting from the pair of 1964 Rambler Ambassadors in the driveway to Dave's collection of Cactus Crafts wagon trains ("that '50s tourist sort of thing," he says) to Lynne's vintage cookware. They even drink 1950s vintage soda, including that Mad Magazine standby, Moxie.

"The house may be the epitome," Juta says of the Peterson's house. "This is Eichler central."

The Petersons have Nelson clocks, both original and reproduction; a 1960s black-and-white TV; a pair of bucket-style easy chairs from Dux; a bed equipped with the Magic Fingers massager (45 minutes for 50 cents, from a bucket of quarters in their closet); and, yes, a pink flamingo in the atrium. "Our motto is: you can live whenever you want," Dave says.

Nostalgia is only part of the appeal, says Dave, who teaches philosophy, with a specialty in aesthetics, and who was born just as the 1950s were dying. "There's a moral component to beauty," he says.

Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work set Eichler on his path, argued that houses should be scaled for human beings. Today's McMansions and suburban wannabes are not, Dave says. But Eichlers are. Their warm wooden paneling is natural, unlike the cold white walls of many other homes. And he loves the atrium. "We've really brought the outside in. We've put it in the middle of the house."

"You feel a certain way when you're in a house like this," he says. "It's not so much that it's old. It's that they got something right."

Photos by David Toerge and Michael Greene

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