Like the Eichlers,
Strengs Drawing
Keen Interest

Homes built by the Streng Bros. Homes have always been popular in greater Sacramento. But they have never achieved the cult status won by the Eichlers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

More and more people, however, are becoming entranced by the homes' modern style, says David Heitz, a Coldwell Banker realtor who devotes 95 percent of his work to Streng homes and neighborhoods. Heitz lives in a Streng himself, and has worked with several clients who have restored Strengs and furnished them with modern furniture. He publishes a monthly update on the Strengs-for-sale marketplace which he sends out to Streng owners throughout the Sacramento area.

People who seek Streng homes, Heitz says, include professionals, lawyers, and architects -- many transplants from the Bay Area. "Everything here in the past was ranch style, but that's not true anymore," he says. "We're behind the Bay Area by several years -- but things are changing dramatically." Heitz, himself a Bay Area transplant, says: "I had always wanted to own an Eichler home but I was priced out of the Eichler market."

In Davis, real estate broker Malek Baroody hasn't seen a surge of interest in Streng homes. But he says they have maintained their popularity with people who appreciate spaciousness and light. Many people remodel their Streng homes to provide more space, improve the cabinetry, or redo the windows, he says. Some do it carefully -- but many do as they please. Second-story additions are common, he says, and not all of them are appropriate to the style.

But if Heitz is correct in his belief that people are becoming more appreciative of modern design, this may change. "There's starting to be a following now of individuals who realize the true architectural interest of these homes," he says.

VALLEY OF THE ATRIUMS
Who are the Streng brothers -- and what's the
story behind their fascinating modern homes?

From the pages of the Eichler Network newsletter
By David Weinstein

As a builder, Joe Eichler never made much impact in California's hot Sacramento Valley. But his work profoundly influenced two brothers who created their own modernist neighborhoods in Davis and greater Sacramento -- including Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Fair Oaks, Orangevale, and Woodland.

Houses by Streng Bros. Homes, Inc., built over a 30-year period beginning in 1959, found favor with lawyers, educators, tall people, and architects, who appreciated their simple lines, light-filled rooms and skylights, and tree-lined neighborhoods.

Bill and Jim Streng built close to 4,000 homes, all but 1,000 modern in style, in 40-some subdivisions and on individual lots. They worked almost entirely with a single architect, Carter Sparks, a dedicated modernist who also built dozens of custom homes for individual clients.

But a Streng home is not an Eichler. Sparks designed homes for a hot climate, which means air-conditioning and no radiant heat. "It's a house you can live in, in this valley," says Bill Streng. It also means atriums that are open to living areas -- not walled in with glass, which would have created a 'hot box.' Instead of being open to the air, like an Eichler, the Streng atrium is domed with tinted acrylic to block heat. Eichler built a similar 'atrium' in some homes which he called a 'gallery.'

Sparks never tried to copy specific Eichler designs, the Strengs say. "We wanted a contemporary house," Jim Streng says, "not necessarily looking like Eichler. At first we were looking for a modern architecture style that we could sell in the $20,000 range."

Today there is a renewed interest in Streng homes, as migrants from the San Francisco Bay Area and Valley natives discover the virtues of mid-century modern design. Jim and Bill Streng, who built their last home in the late 1980s, remain active with real estate investments and other activities -- and proud of their contribution to Northern California's architectural heritage.

The brothers, who were raised in Pennsylvania and educated at Dartmouth, came to California in the 1950s where they worked with their 'Uncle Phil' Heraty. In 1957 Heraty quit. Several subdivisions were underway, and he offered these to top members of his staff. "Jim and I drew Sacramento," Bill says. They were building "typical garage-dominant Sacramento Valley" ranch-style homes, Bill says. But the economy was tough. "We perceived that if we did what everybody else was doing, we were not destined to do well," he says.

The Strengs have several connections with Eichler. They were inspired by Eichler and his architects, and Jim Streng toured Eichler neighborhoods before adopting similar designs. Sparks had earlier worked at the firm of Anshen and Allen, Eichler's original team of architects. And at one point, the Strengs and Eichler briefly discussed sharing designs -- and even merging.

They began thinking modern. Neither knew much about architecture, but they had heard of Eichler. And early on some buyers complimented the Strengs on one element in some of their homes that was modern -- a room with a tall, redwood-beamed cathedral ceiling. In 1958 Jim toured an Eichler neighborhood in Marin County. "I told Bill, we can't copy those," says Jim. "They were too unique and too good."

Then Jim ran into Carter Sparks at a class for expectant parents they were attending with their wives. Sparks was a young architect but was already known as Sacramento's modernist. He had been building custom homes in the Sacramento area since the mid-1950s.

Sparks, who was born in Utah in 1923 and grew up mostly in Klamath Fall, Oregon, served in the Navy, and then graduated with a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley in 1950. He worked from 1950 to 1953 at Anshen and Allen in San Francisco. His only child, Jennifer Sparks, says his work included Eichler subdivisions. Sparks later worked briefly for San Francisco modernist Mario Corbett. An inventive man who designed a submarine as a child and loved mechanics, Sparks was a fan of early modern architects like Louis Sullivan and Greene & Greene, and was particularly fond of Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he visited at Taliesen, his daughter says. Homes that merely copied historical style, she says, he called 'gobbledygook.'

Sparks and the Strengs hit it off, and the brothers asked Sparks to design them a modern home. The architect hesitated. "I really don't like things being duplicated," he told Jim. "I like doing things individually." But, Jim says, Sparks decided: "If it's good enough to build once, it ought to be good enough to build again."

Sparks wasn't always so easy to convince. People who knew Sparks throughout his career said he would never build something that wasn't modern -- and would never compromise on design principles or quality. He became the Strengs' modernist conscience -- from day one. Bill remembers bringing him to their first development, Evergreen Estates subdivision in Sacramento, to show off a model home. The front of the ranch house had brick below and cedar siding above. The rear was all stucco. "Carter sat there shaking his head," Bill remembers, "and Jim and I looked at each other, 'What did we do wrong?'" Sparks used materials consistently -- "If it's good enough for the front [of the house], it's good enough for the back," he told Jim.

"He had definite ideas about what was right and wrong," Bill says. "When we were selling these houses," Bill says, "we became believers. We were able ourselves to tell people, 'No, Carter wouldn't permit that -- and you wouldn't want it either.'"

Sparks designed what the Strengs call 'the Carter classic,' a flexible plan that could include three or four bedrooms, and an open-plan living area blending living room, dining, and kitchen. Different roof lines and elevations provided variety while using the same basic plan. The main living area had walls of glass with sliding-glass doors opening onto a backyard, and bedrooms with high transom windows for privacy and light. Living-dining rooms had high ceilings -- up to 13 feet -- often with beamed ceilings following the roof line.

Particularly popular were the atrium designs. Many owners filled the atriums with gardens. At least one installed an indoor waterfall. The Strengs offered a flat-roofed model as well as the 'transitional,' so-called because its low-pitched gable roof -- the gable ends filled with glass -- recalled the more traditional ranch. It proved their most popular home then and remains so today.

Most homes were sold before they were built, and many were customized for the buyer. Sparks worked with buyers to make sure the changes fit the architectural style. Most homes ranged from 1,800 to 2,200 square feet. The Strengs also built half-plexes -- smaller attached homes, about 1,300 square feet.

Interior touches included the same spherical lighting fixtures used by Eichler, exposed concrete aggregate floors extending from the outside in, and rectangular redwood and plastic light fixtures designed by Sparks. Bill and his wife Karmen, a quiltmaker, have lived in their Carter Classic, expanded to 2,200 feet, since 1975.

The homes Sparks designed for the Strengs shared many characteristics with his custom homes. "You could see what he did when he wasn't working for cheapskates," Bill jokes, showing off one of Sparks' custom homes in the El Macero neighborhood of Davis. The home is a spectacular composition of glass, broad stone piers, steel fireplace, wooden beams, and shingled, low-pitched Craftsman-style roof. Angled glass walls artfully bring the outdoors inside -- and make it hard to tell which is which.

"We were trying to capture what he did at a cut rate," Bill says. But Sparks wasn't always interested in cut rate. He asked for brushed aluminum doorknobs and they agreed. Then he asked for brushed aluminum hinges instead of the standard brass. "I told Carter, it's not worth 50 cents extra per door. Nobody will notice them," Jim says. "He said, 'I'll pay for them.' He shamed us into it."

Other aspects of Sparks' design saved the Strengs money, however, including cathedral ceilings that shared joists with the roof, sparing the cost of an attic. And the modern homes had no need of "fake shutters or curlicues," Bill says. "Hiring an architect didn't cost us money," Jim says. "It saved us money."

Working with Sparks, however, could be challenging. Sparks loved the creative side of architecture. "When he was inspired," Bill says, "he could work prodigiously. I could state as a fact he was a genius." But he wasn't inspired when it came to churning out working drawings or handling paperwork. This proved tough for the Strengs because Sparks, who was never their employee, generally ran a one-man office.

"Sometimes he didn't get things done," Bill says. "He spent an awful lot of time at the coffee shop socializing with his neighbors," Bill says. "Jim would go over and drag him out of the coffee shop, sit him down at his desk. Jim would sit outside and would answer the phone and say: 'Carter's in conference.' " The Strengs finally hired architecture students to do working drawings, under Sparks' direction.

Sparks was tall, blond, fit and gregarious, a tennis player, and thoroughly enjoyed life. "Carter Sparks was happy with Carter Sparks," Bill says. "He had enough. He knew he had that talent he could turn on -- he could attract clients when he wanted to attract clients." Jennifer Sparks remembers a man who loved working on his Lotus Europa sports car, skiing, and socializing. In the 1950s Sparks and his first wife raced their Austin Healy at Laguna Seca near Monterey. Unlike the Strengs, bedrock Republicans, Sparks was far to the left and very vocal about his beliefs, Jennifer says. Sparks built his daughter a set of Wrightian chairs, and a rectilinear canopy bed she still sleeps in.

John Siler, an interior designer who worked with Sparks on custom homes and Streng models, says Sparks stuck almost entirely with residential architecture, never moving into more remunerative commercial jobs. But Sparks had a solid niche, with many of his modern homes overlooking the American River. "He was unique in this area for doing this type of house," Siler says. "If anyone wanted a contemporary house, he was the one to go to."

Jennifer Sparks says her father built about 50 custom homes in his career. It was that same modern niche that worked for the Strengs. "Nine out of 10 people looking at models didn't like the contemporary," Jim says. "We were the one builder building for that 10 percent."

The antipathy towards modern architecture in the conservative Valley could be comical, the Strengs say. "One guy I remember looked around and said, 'Well, if I wanted to live in the barn, I would have stayed in Nebraska,' " Bill recalls. Jim adds: "A building inspector said, 'Is this a house or a drive-in dairy?' " The hesitation spread to the Federal Housing Administration, whose loan guarantees were needed for most buyers to qualify for mortgages. The FHA doubted whether Streng homes would retain their values. To make a case, Bill went door-to-door in Eichler's only Sacramento subdivision, South Land Park. Some Eichler owners complained about the radiant heat and poor insulation, he says, but 98 percent said they would buy another Eichler or Eichler-type home. The Strengs won FHA approval.

The 10 percent of the population that liked modern homes differed in predictable ways from the 90 percent that didn't. Jim remembers running into flak from some homeowner associations when they proposed building Carter Classics on lots in custom-home neighborhoods. "They were apprehensive this plain-looking house that didn't have any of those expensive shutters that didn't shut, and didn't have brick wainscoting would detract from the property values. And that strange people would move in. That was not an entirely unfounded fear."

A political campaigner did a count, Jim says. One Streng subdivision was 85 percent Democratic. The ranch subdivision next door was 70 percent Republican. Strengs attracted so many teachers -- and tall people, entranced by the high ceilings -- they brainstormed ways of directing advertising at these two groups. They never did -- but their ads did boast how many licensed architects bought their homes -- one count was 37.

Streng Bros. Homes was always attentive to cost. Uncle Phil told them overhead could be fatal, Jim says. They kept staffing tight, with 100 employees maximum, most of those on the job site. They were a union shop. Jim, who maintained the Sacramento office after Bill opened a Davis office in 1962, had a salesman and a payroll person. Bill had two bookkeepers. Their current office in Davis still uses their original furniture, some of which began as hand-me-downs.

The Strengs generally built between 100 and 200 homes a year, usually with two or three subdivisions active at a time. They wanted their jobs to be within an hour of their office. As they got older that dropped to a half hour. The firm was profitable every year, Jim says. The Strengs thought briefly of franchising, and occasionally of expanding, but the brothers were wary of delegating authority, they say.

One idea that did appeal, however, was a deal with their hero, Joe Eichler. It was the mid-'60s, they remember, shortly after Eichler had constructed Geneva Towers, a pair of San Francisco high-rise apartment buildings whose lack of success contributed to Eichler's financial downturn. The Strengs had the idea of building some of Eichler's designs in their market and asked for a meeting.

They met at Eichler's office in downtown San Francisco and spent a leisurely three hours swapping stories and talking business over lunch at Eichler's usual table at Jack's restaurant. Jim treated. "It was a marvelous experience," Jim says. "I felt like I was meeting with the president. To me, all the things he did, selling to minorities when no other builder would sell to a minority -- he just was...he was a god. We both looked up to him."

"Eichler had never heard of us," Jim says. "He couldn't believe we were selling these houses in Sacramento." "We took our little handouts," Bill says. "He looked at it. 'That is a good plan!,' Eichler told us, with wonderment in his voice at these country bumpkins." The Strengs suggested building Eichlers in the Valley but said they would need to adapt them for the climate. Eichler seemed hesitant. "He said, 'I want to think about this,' " Jim says.

They never discussed details nor financing. Some time later Eichler called, with a different suggestion. "He didn't want to share plans," Jim says, "he wanted to merge. Bill and I didn't want another partner." It was their last contact with Eichler.

In the 1980s, Jim, who had been on the Sacramento County Planning Commission, was elected to the county Board of Supervisors. He served six-and-a-half years. The firm's activity slowed. The last Streng subdivision was Arlington Farm Apartments in Davis. Sparks, who remained with the Strengs his entire career, moved to Clarksburg, a Delta town near Sacramento, when he retired. He and his second wife lived in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse that Sparks remodeled. Sparks died six years ago of lung cancer. So many people squeezed into his funeral, his daughter says, it started an hour late.

Although the Strengs' sons all pounded nails for the firm when they were in college, none of their children wanted to take on the business. Two of Jim's sons are custom builders -- doing traditional-style homes. The Strengs remain fit and active. Jim, 73, loves getting up to the Sierras. Bill, 77, walks a lot -- on doctor's orders -- often around Streng subdivisions in Davis where he notices second-story additions and other changes that cause shivers.

Covenants designed to protect the architectural integrity of the homes require homeowners to go before a committee before major remodels. But these aren't enforced. The committee includes Bill and Jim. "I haven't been called on a question in at least 10 years," Jim says. "Maybe 20."

Both Strengs remain fans of modern design and are surprised no enterprising developer has taken up the cause. Jim blames that on the inherent conservatism of corporate builders. "I'm impressed because there still is a market. People still do like contemporary design," he says. "It makes me want to go out and build more modern homes again."

Discover more about Sacramento's Streng homes at the Eichler Network's Streng Homes Headquarters.

Photos courtesy David Heitz, Jennifer Sparks, and Streng Bros. Homes

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