FAMILY-FIRST FAIRHAVEN
Newcomers to the tiny, obscure San Jose Eichler
neighborhood aren't just welcomed -- they're adopted

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Not everything was sweetness and light when Erica and Steve Dreyer moved from San Francisco to a small enclave of Eichler homes in San Jose that is so obscure even most of the inhabitants have forgotten the tract's original name.

The Dreyers, who were expecting their first child, planned to renovate their new home, which clearly needed it. "Somebody said, 'Don't buy any tools. Somebody else in the neighborhood will have it and lend it to you,'" Steve recalls. The couple had already begun ripping apart the kitchen on their first night in the house, so a restaurant eat-out was expected. Instead, their next-door neighbor invited them for dinner.

Today that neighbor, Lyn Rowland, is a close friend and their son's "surrogate grandmother," Erica says. "We were surprised how friendly people were," she adds.

There were several initial encounters, however, that while friendly had an edge to them. "When people saw us working on the house," Steve says, "they came by to see if we planned any major additions." When the Dreyers answered "no," relief was clear.

Fairhaven, though small, is remarkable both for its sense of community and its architectural integrity. Except for one home that, while retaining its Eichler lines, was given a brick façade, one flat-roofed model that got an added room, and the most recent unsympathetic change, a small bay window to a third house, the neighborhood "looks exactly like it has my whole life," says Ivy Chesser, who was born In Fairhaven in 1971 and moved back seven years ago.

"Fifty-seven families," Mike Ahern brags about his neighborhood, "and they all love their Eichlers."

"We're like the hidden jewel," Ivy says of her neighborhood, and her husband Kyle chimes in: "because not a lot of people know we exist."

Or even what the neighborhood is called. 'Fairhaven,' the original name, is known today only by old-timers and folks who peruse the original plans. Most people, if they call the place anything, call it 'Mossbrook' after two of its three streets.

Built in 1961 and 1962 on a former plum orchard, Fairhaven features three different Eichler models, designed by the architectural firms of Claude Oakland and Jones & Emmons. Two of the models have low gables and an atrium; a third has a flat roof and no atrium. Most are 1,750 square feet, plus atrium. Rowland, an original buyer, paid $26,000 for her home. Homes with larger lots in the center of the circle went for $500 to $1,000 more.

What really makes the 48-year-old neighborhood special is less architectural than social preservation. Person after person in the neighborhood, even the kids, describes it as an extended family, a place where people know their neighbors well.

"Pete and Lisa [Ford] next door are like an aunt and uncle," says Jacob Cassell, Ivy Chesser's son. Residents tend to stay. There are about nine original owners, and many more who have been there for 30 or more years. Even when people leave, they don't really leave. "They come back for the birthings, marriages, and burying," says Susan Robbins, a resident since 1975.

"I thought of moving," long-timer Ann Thompson says, "but the kids said, 'You can't do that, because when we come home we want to see 'our whole family.' That's the way they put it."

"Eighteen months after we moved in, we know everyone," says newcomer Nate Johnson, who's raising a daughter with his wife Paige. "We call it Pleasantville."

The layout certainly contributes to its neighborliness -- as does the neighborhood's size, which makes it possible for the socially adept to know almost everyone. In the evening, many people stroll, often pushing perambulators filled with babies -- or even their pets. "It's like an enclosed village," Rowland says of Fairhaven. "I really believe that's why it attracts people."

"I think it's the attitude, the spirit of the place," Robbins says. "People are determined to care for each other."

It is, in fact, human action that turned this neighborhood into the family place it's become -- and much of that action was performed by a handful of young families who'd arrived in the mid-1970s: the Kings, Thompsons, Stevens, Smalls, among others. Most had kids and several played trombones. As America's Bicentennial approached, they thought -- a July 4th celebration!

Ivy, who was five that first fourth-of-July festivity and has attended dozens since, describes three-legged races and a balloon toss, a softball game, a talent show, fireworks in the early years, and a parade featuring a trombone-laden band playing 'The Saints' while circling Mossbrook. "And somebody always dresses up like the Statue of Liberty," she adds.

"It's pretty darn amazing," Christine Bumgarner says of July 4th. It's inspirational too. Christine and her husband Bill, who are newcomers, have started a neighborly tradition of their own -- the February 'Crab-tacular,' featuring 240 pounds of crab, 50 pounds of pulled pork -- and plenty of tequila.

Other community-building activities don't include quite so much tequila. One of the most important, folks says, is the 'Book Club,' which is made up entirely of women ("though we would accept a guy," Diana Lubliner says) that spends some time talking literature, sure, but goes well beyond. They also discuss remodeling and family and community affairs. "The book club is probably the biggest reason this neighborhood has such cohesion," Lubliner says. "It keeps people talking to each other a lot."

Although Fairhaven has always been a special place, it has been undergoing resurgence as young couples, families, and individuals move in and restore homes that had faded.

Today Fairhaven is a marvelous mix of young and old. "I've never had so many people I would call friends who are retired," Steve Dreyer says.

What's remarkable about the newcomers is how similar they are to the old-timers. Fairhaven has always been a high-tech sort of place. Back in the '60s, engineers filled the neighborhood, along with educators and other professionals.

Dick King, one of the founders of the fourth-of-July party (and one of the trombonists), said high prices had kept younger families out of the area for some time. But four or five years ago, he noticed, "a dramatic influx of young families, all high-tech," moving in. "We have one or two Google families, a couple of biotech families." There are also contingents from Apple, HP, and Netflix.

The newcomers also resemble the past generations in another way. Many plan to stay. Diana and Josh Lubliner, software engineers who have two young daughters, say they were willing to pay a premium for their home for that reason. "This is our final resting place," Diana says.

Lubliner spends much of her free time beautifying her garden. The neighborhood, with its awning of camphor trees and a spectacular, 50-foot Queen palm that resident Dave Winn planted 20 years ago as a sprout, clearly has fecund soil. Suzanne and Tom Regul, who arrived in 1966, have one of the larger backyards, which they filled with an orange tree as big as a valley oak, along with banana, fig, persimmon, cherry, plum, avocado, and apricot.

Newcomers are undoing the relatively minor unsympathetic changes that have occurred over the years -- a garage door with a fanlight window and a French-style lighting fixture are being replaced with more appropriate devices.

Indoors, too, changes are underway. This is not, overall, a purist neighborhood, although many homes retain their original mahogany walls and fixtures. Few have original kitchen cabinets.

But most residents understand the modern aesthetic and many are recreating it. "We've been on a painstaking journey to bring it back the way we remembered it," Kyle Chesser says of his and Ivy's home, which still has its original ceiling stain, though a previous owner painted the beams white. The couple restored some of their mahogany walls. Kyle, a commercial photographer, sometimes uses the home as a setting for shoots.

Despite the residents' love for their architecture, the neighborhood has neither design guidelines nor any city ordinances preserving the architecture.

Back in 2006, Suzanne Regul did spearhead the formation of a community group, the Moreland West Neighborhood Association. But the association takes in more than the 57 Eichler homes -- its boundaries take in 520 homes, and more than 100 have joined. The organization deals with general neighborhood issues, not matters that are Eichler specific.

The group formed when the local school district closed the nearby elementary school and planned to almost double the size of the middle school that borders the neighborhood by consolidating it with another school. Neighbors feared noise, vandalism, crime, gangs, parking problems -- and the loss of a long-popular community garden on the grounds of the school.

Regul, a retired physician who is known in the neighborhood for her inspired tap-dancing at the fourth-of-July talent show, put together a group that worked closely with the school district and accomplished many of its goals.

The school did increase in size, although serious crime problems never followed. Nor have noise and vandalism been bad. And as for parking, Diana Lubliner says, "At school board meetings we said we would rather have people parking on our streets and have a garden than turn it [the garden] into a parking lot."

Neighbors won -- in part, by bringing to meetings cornucopia of fruit and vegetables grown in the garden. The school district built a parking structure rather than pave the garden.

The garden, with 40 plots, features vegetables, fruit trees, and a rose garden. Ron Burton brags about his three varieties of squash, which he sautés most every night with tomatoes. "It's almost addictive, it's so good," he says. The garden provides the neighborhood with another social outlook, with potlucks and communal work parties.

One topic the neighborhood association has never addressed is architectural preservation -- and not just because the association includes more than Eichler homes. It is a sensitive subject.

Several years ago Regul brought the matter up because she was afraid the monster homes that were popping up among some Sunnyvale Eichlers might migrate to her neighborhood too.

"People rose up against it," Dick King says. "I was against it. People were afraid houses would be torn down for big two-story houses. I was willing to take that risk to maintain the price of the houses. It's a free world, you know."

This is, after all, a neighborhood that dislikes disputes. As Ann Thompson puts it, "We said, look, we want to be friends more than we want a historical designation."

Photos: David Toerge, Bill Bumgarner

• Fairhaven is an enclave of three streets -- Student Lane, Mossbrook Avenue, and Mossbrook Circle. It occupies a wedge in the western portion of San Jose sandwiched between Campbell and Saratoga. It is not to be confused with another Eichler neighborhood named Fairhaven in the Southern California city of Orange.

Better living through electricity The 1978 Volvo was advertised on Craigslist for $150 with a blown engine. How could a Volvo guy resist? And who needs an engine? Starting in mid-2007, Fairhaven's Mike Ahern spent 100 hours over 14 months turning his new purchase into an electric car. "I used to be a Ford guy and I was into muscle cars in school," Ahern says. "Then I became a Volvo guy. Then I became an electric Volvo guy." "I was already working for a company that made electricity," he says, of Solyndra, which hit the news recently for installing an array of its tubular photovoltaic solar panels atop a Cineplex in Livermore. "It's more mechanical than it is electrical to do the conversion," Ahern says, adding, "It helps to be a car guy to do a project like this. Like any car, it has brakes and suspension. But doing the conversion is really, really low tech. If you can understand ohms, amps, and volts, you can do it." To spread the word, Ahern takes neighbors and friends for rides. About half of his Eichler neighbors have peered under the hood. The car goes 40 miles on a charge, and it costs him about 60 cents to charge it. That will drop to zero cents once Ahern installs a photovoltaic array on his roof. Mike and wife Tanya have another Volvo, and Mike recently bought a third for his daughter, Dee Dee, who helped on the conversion. Neither is electric. A native of Minnesota, Ahern has lived in California for nine years and in his Eichler for three. You won't find a bigger fan. The houses, he says, appeal to scientists and engineers. "The Eichler is not frilly," he says. "There are no non-essential parts. Eichler didn't like shutters that didn't open, and he didn't hide a beam. The beam is right up there. You can see it. Everything is functional, and something like that appeals to engineers. Simplicity is beautiful, you know. There's some sincerity there." "I love new technology. I love modern stuff, and Eichler loved modern stuff. It's forward-looking. It's inherently optimistic. It's thinking, 'I'm going to do something and I'm going to change the world for the better.' All scientists are optimistic."

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