RANCHO SAN MIGUEL - WALNUT CREEK
This special East Bay Eichler neighborhood celebrates
its 50th anniversary and eyes historic designation

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Phil Toy expected to spend a few hours at Walnut Creek's Rancho San Miguel the first time he visited. That was six years ago -- and he's still there.

A professional photographer and car collector, he figured the neighborhood of Eichler homes would make an attractive backdrop for the '64 Ford Galaxie he was shooting for the cover of a car collectors magazine. Toy honed in on a house with a cactus out front for that Southwest feeling. That's when a woman drove up and told him the house was for sale. "I bought it right on the spot," he says. "The house was built in 1957 and my cars were from '57. I bought the house to match the cars."

Rancho San Miguel, a subdivision of 535 homes -- 375 Eichlers, the rest standard ranches -- is one of Joe Eichler's lesser-known neighborhoods. But it's about to enter the spotlight, both by celebrating its 50th anniversary (the neighborhood was built from 1955-'58) and by seeking a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rancho San Miguel is no longer the rural outpost that it was in the beginning. But it retains much of the original character -- both architectural and personal. From the start, the neighborhood attracted individualists who were willing to try something new and different, and it still does. The East Bay suburbs can be bland, but you'd never know it from meeting the people who live in Rancho San Miguel.

"Eichler would do everything he could to get what he considered the right people in here, people who were artistically sympathetic and in the arts, and not people who would have a closed mind to anything," says Charles Dorsett, an original owner who helped design the neighborhood as a young architect with the firm of Anshen + Allen.

"Everybody was an activist in some way," says Dorsett's wife, Dorothy, who's been long active in the Sierra Club and other organizations. "They wanted to improve things."

"The people who are attracted to these houses are open-minded," Charles Dorsett says, referring to newcomers as well as to original owners, "and they probably are college educated and they probably have taken art appreciation and have an interest in the arts."

Dorsett, who has had a second career as an actor, singer and set designer for community and professional theater, has singers, musicians and artists for neighbors. "The people here," he says, "are interesting." Original buyers were teachers, doctors, architects, engineers; and of varied ethnicities -- Japanese and Chinese, Jewish, Mormon, African American -- a highly unusual mix in mid-'50s suburbia.

Aileen Haslett may have been a typical buyer. "I was just sick and tired of living in a ranch style home," she says. "You could be blind-folded and find your way around. This was so different." "It was the modern architecture," original resident Bruce Good says of the attraction, "and the light and the style."

It took courage to live in an Eichler. "People we knew thought we were crazy because we moved into this strange house," says Dora Good, who bought a new home in Rancho San Miguel with her husband Bruce. Bruce, an engineer at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, had to put up with criticism from close quarters. "My mother, she said they all look like garages. I resisted any resentment at her judgments."

It also took courage to move to Walnut Creek, one of the most sophisticated small cities in the Bay Area today, but rustic and remote in the mid-'50s."This was really the only tract in the entire valley," Charles Dorsett recalls. "This was all horse country."

"This was just a wide open mud prairie," says original resident Ruth Whalen, who would hike through the neighborhood after her husband left for work every morning. "The people were pioneers," Dora Good says.

The Whalens' house even looked like a pioneer homestead -- surrounded by their plots of asparagus, melons, tomatoes, and green and red peppers, which they shared with the neighbors.

Folks moving to Rancho San Miguel today are no longer pioneers. But by all accounts they resemble their predecessors. "It seems to be a little touch of the eccentric," says Julia Pattinson, who recently moved into the neighborhood with her husband and two children. "It's a nice mixture of people." "Families come and go," says Haslett, "and the same type of people seem to buy Eichlers. We used to call them eggheads."

Today, the neighborhood attracts lovers of modern design, people attracted by the charms of Walnut Creek (an easy commute, plentiful shopping in a lively downtown, a regional arts center) and young families who appreciate the excellent schools, neighborhood parks and the nearby Mount Diablo State Park.

John and Stephanie Dark, both lovers of design and parents of young children, are part of a welcome trend -- the return of young families to the neighborhood. Their cul-de-sac was once home to 33 children, they were told. When they arrived in 2001, there were only two. Today, counting the dark's two, there are 14. "It's a little community just like the old days," John says.

How the Darks went about finding their home says much about the appeal Eichler houses still carry. "We actually went door to door with flyers asking folks to sell their Eichler, as there were none on the market at the time we were looking," John says.

Rancho San Miguel was one of Eichler's first forays away from the Santa Clara Valley and the Peninsula. Although Central Contra Costa was largely undeveloped at the time, it was clearly ready to grow. The first phase of Broadway Plaza shopping center had recently gone up in Walnut Creek, and Kaiser Permanente was providing the town with a modern hospital. Plans were underway for a freeway. Eichler himself donated land to the city to establish two parks with views of Mount Diablo, a grade school, and what would become his tract's social center, the Rancho San Miguel Swim Club.

"Eichler was looking for a place to make a splash," says Bob Brownbridge, a neighborhood historian who was a buyer in the 1950s for the department store Capwell's, which opened a branch at Broadway Plaza. "He named this place as an up-and-coming suburb in the East Bay and the place he picked was pretty accurate. This is the hub of the valley out here. Just using his good nose he picked a good area."

Ygnacio Road, today a river of traffic, was two lanes, and wary drivers had to watch for cows. The commute to San Francisco took an hour and a half, stopping at every traffic light. "It was miserable," Charles Dorsett remembers. Bruce Good, who often came through as a boy, remembers when Ygnacio Valley was awash in walnut and almond orchards. "The walnut trees were so big you would drive through tunnels of trees. They touched you. You felt like you were going through a tunnel."

Eichler, who built his neighborhood on the old Randall Farm, saved as many trees as possible, wonderful old oaks and walnut and almond trees as well. For years the Goods enjoyed the pink and white almond flowers, and harvested the nuts. Dorsett was so entranced by the valley oak that towered over one of Rancho San Miguel's new houses that he bought the house on the spot -- even though it was designed by the firm Jones & Emmons, and not by his employer Anshen + Allen.

"I understand you bought a house over there -- but you bought a Jones and Emmons house," Bob Anshen cautioned Dorsett when he returned to the office. "Please don't buy a Jones and Emmons!" But Anshen proved a reasonable man. "He came out and looked at the tree and said, 'I understand why you bought the house,' " Dorsett recounts.

Dorsett, who helped arrange the houses on their lots, says: "They were designed for young professional families before they became young families. We knew when we were designing them that within a short time there would be one and a half children per house, so we had to plan for that. Eichler was socially conscious."

In the early days, mothers stayed at home with their children, gathered in the evenings to chat, and formed cooperative babysitting clubs. Dorothy Dorsett enjoyed biking through the quiet valley as far as Mount Diablo.

The men got to know each other on weekends working in their gardens. "The whole block was filled with people up and down who were landscaping their yards," Bruce Good says. "On Saturday you'd be working out front and see your neighbors all doing the same." In the evenings neighbors would gather for barbecues, he remembers. At Christmas they'd go caroling. It was far more neighborly than today, he says. "We knew everybody, even blocks away."

Today, Walnut Creek is no longer the country and kids no longer explore the hills and ponds that were long ago replaced by a neighborhood shopping center. But more and more children are returning to the neighborhood, and people notice. "People have said to us it's really nice to have people with young families moving back into the neighborhood again," says Julia Pattinson. She and her husband, Michael, an architect, have a daughter, Anya, and son, Brodie.

The Rancho San Miguel Homeowner's Association, Walnut Creek's oldest continuously active association, puts on an annual Halloween parade and Easter egg hunt. Neighbors young and old come together at a number of summer block parties held each year, and the Eichler-built swim club functions as the hub of activity.

Like many newcomers, the Pattinsons immediately started restoring their house -- modernizing it while retaining the Eichler look and spirit. The Pattinsons have restored the original siding, added maple flooring and redid the kitchen in contemporary black-and-white. "I think that's part of the Eichler thing," Michael says. "Everybody you talk to is doing something on them. It's like having a '50s Chevy. You've got to clean and polish it more than most cars."

Merritt Colman, who hopes to place the neighborhood on the National Register, sees that effort as another form of cleaning and polishing. "What this is all about is recognition, not restrictions," he says. "It will encourage people to maintain their houses at maybe a little higher level than they would otherwise. It's a pride of ownership. They are living in a historic community."

A neighborhood survey showed that 75 to 80 percent of the Eichler homes "contribute" to a historic district, meaning they retain their historic exterior appearance. Colman was part of the Eichler Historic Quest Committee that succeeded in placing two Palo Alto neighborhoods on the National Register. The homeowners association supports the effort.

Rancho San Miguel became eligible for the National Register when it turned 50. The association plans to mark the neighborhood's 50th anniversary in October with a special celebration and dinner for its residents accented with a 1950s theme.

No one appreciates rancho San Miguel's unique qualities more than Phil Toy, whose collectable Cadillacs can sometimes be spotted cruising its streets. Toy, whose collection includes a '59 Cadillac convertible coupe with red leather seats, an 'Orion' blue Cadillac from '57, and a tank-like, but elegant, 1957 El Dorado Brougham, a show car complete with a built-in bar that sold at the time for more than many houses. "Everything they were thinking about for the future was implemented in this car," Toy says. Cadillac's chief designer, Harley Earl, was as much a modernist as any Eichler architect, adds Toy.

On balmy summer nights Toy has been known to turn his backyard into a drive-in theater, with friends seated in his Caddies watching 'Batman' or other "goofy, crazy fun stuff." Like his Cadillacs, Toy claims, his Eichler will never grow old. "The raw, core design is so stunning, it withstands time," he says. "Great design transcends time. That's why I appreciate this house so much."

Photos by David Toerge; additional photo (Easter egg hunt) by Sheila Ford

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