Before They Were Eichlers: The Untold Story of the Craftspeople, Designers & Immigrants Behind the Homes
Postwar California – A Convergence of Cultures and Ideas
In the wake of World War II, California became a vibrant melting pot where modern architecture met the dreams of a diverse populace. The economic boom and housing demand of the late 1940s drew people from all walks of life into the building of new suburban homes. Joseph “Joe” Eichler – himself the son of German-Jewish immigrants – seized this moment to create modern dwellings for the middle class. Eichler’s personal experiences with prejudice (many developers refused to sell homes to Jews or other minorities) fueled his conviction that neighborhoods should be open to all. This progressive outlook set the stage for an extraordinary collaboration. On Eichler construction sites, one might find Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) carpenters working alongside European émigré designers and local laborers, all united by the task of building something innovative. The cultural and socioeconomic conditions of postwar California – a booming economy, a climate of optimism, and gradual shifts toward inclusion – allowed this mix of talent to converge in a way that seemed unlikely a decade earlier.
California’s Mid-Century Modernism was deeply shaped by these converging influences. European modernist refugees brought avant-garde design principles, while Japanese-American craftsmen and other immigrants infused projects with skilled workmanship and a keen eye for detail. Eichler actively sought out top architects regardless of background, partnering with firms like Anshen & Allen, A. Quincy Jones & Frederick Emmons, and even the Sephardic Jewish émigré Raphael Soriano. By the mid-1950s, Eichler Homes, Inc. was employing diverse teams to design and build what would become 11,000 modern tract homes across California. The resulting “Eichlers” – with their glass walls, post-and-beam construction, and open plans – embodied not just a style, but the collaborative spirit of those who created them.
An iconic mid-century Eichler home in California. Behind its clean lines and open atrium lay the contributions of many unsung hands, from immigrant carpenters to visionary architects.
Rising from Internment – Japanese-American Craftsmen and Designers
Perhaps the most poignant stories belong to the Japanese-American craftsmen and designers who helped build mid-century California despite having endured the injustice of wartime internment. In 1942, families of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were uprooted and confined in desert camps. Many lost homes, businesses, and years of their lives. Yet in the decades after World War II, these individuals emerged with resilience, applying their skills to help construct the new American suburbs.
One such story is that of Kinji Imada – a name little known outside Eichler circles, but deeply respected within. At age 15, Imada and his family were forced from their Fresno home (with its lovingly tended Japanese garden and koi pond) and sent to the Gila River internment camp in Arizona. They lost nearly everything. In camp, young Kinji finished high school in makeshift classrooms where students and teachers even built their own desks and benches. The trauma of incarceration left deep scars. Years later, Imada recalled how, even after leaving the camp, he was treated with suspicion – once reduced to tears when falsely accused of theft while working as a kitchen helper.
Yet Imada refused to be defined solely by hardship. After the war, he seized an opportunity afforded to many returning Nisei: the GI Bill. He enrolled at Harvard’s architecture school for a year, then served in the U.S. Army to fully earn his college benefits. Returning to Harvard, Imada studied under the great Bauhaus émigré Walter Gropius, absorbing the cutting-edge modernist ideals of form and function By 1955 he earned his architecture degree. In a remarkable twist of fate, the boy once seen as an “enemy alien” became an architect helping to shape American homes.
In 1960, Kinji Imada joined architect Claude Oakland’s firm – the chief designer of many later Eichler developments. Imada was the behind-the-scenes genius who translated bold designs into buildable reality. Colleagues say he was “the one who got the Eichlers built”. Soft-spoken and meticulous, Imada standardized construction details and refined material choices to make Eichler houses economical yet enduring. “Without him there would have been no Claude Oakland Eichler homes,” one fellow architect noted, praising Imada’s technical mastery and eye for quality. Imada’s own life journey – from a Buddhist youth in a tight-knit Japanese community, to an internment camp student body president, to a U.S. Army clerk in occupied Japan, and finally to a quiet architect of the American Dream – exemplifies the resilience of Japanese-American craftspeople. Every time an Eichler home stood solid against time, it silently honored Imada’s expertise and, by extension, the community he represented.
Imada was not alone. Dozens of Japanese-American artisans and builders found their way into California’s postwar construction and design industry. In Southern California, Japanese-American gardeners and landscapers helped shape suburbs like Gardena, transforming open lots into lush environments. Many former internees turned to the building trades out of necessity – farming had been barred to them by alien land laws even before the war. Now, with land ownership still difficult and prior livelihoods wiped out, working as carpenters, plasterers, or gardeners offered a path to rebuilding their lives.
Inside the camps themselves, seeds of craftsmanship had quietly blossomed. In one internment camp workshop, a young internee named George Nakashima was taught traditional woodworking by an elderly Japanese master craftsman. Nakashima later reflected that it was in those barracks, armed with only scrap wood and hand tools, that he “first learned to really create with wood”. After the war, Nakashima would become one of America’s most celebrated furniture makers – his tables and chairs merging modernist forms with the soul of Japanese carpentry. When he built a humble yet beautiful home for his family in early postwar Pennsylvania, government photographers showed up – eager to propagandize that the former internees were “happy” and “successful” despite their ordeal. Nakashima’s exquisite work (butterfly joints in rich walnut slabs, for example) told a different story: one of perseverance and the quiet fusion of cultural heritage with modern art.
A mid-century table and chairs crafted in rich walnut wood. Master craftsman George Nakashima, who was interned during WWII, learned traditional Japanese woodworking techniques in camp – skills he later used to create iconic modern furniture. His work symbolized the melding of Japanese craft heritage with American modernist design.
Other Japanese-American designers also emerged from the shadows of internment to leave a mark on mid-century design. Architect Gyo Obata, for instance, avoided camp by studying in St. Louis, but his parents were incarcerated at Utah’s Topaz camp. After the war, Obata co-founded global architecture firm HOK, proving that talent cannot be forever stifled by prejudice. Sculptor Ruth Asawa, who as a teenager had been interned in Arkansas, recalled the devastation of her family losing their farm and possessions: “We had nothing after that,” she said of the day they were forced out. In camp, Asawa took art lessons from former Disney animators who were also imprisoned. She later became famous for her ethereal wire sculptures and public art, enriching California’s cultural landscape. Even venerated architect Minoru Yamasaki, designer of New York’s World Trade Center, felt the sting of anti-Japanese bias – he escaped West Coast internment by moving to New York in 1942, but after the war faced housing discrimination in Detroit. Despite such obstacles, Yamasaki and his Japanese-American contemporaries rose to prominence. As architecture critic Alexandra Lange observed, “once you start to look at postwar American design through the lens of Japanese-American history, you realize that the two are inextricable.” The modern American aesthetic – from tranquil gardens to tasteful interiors – owed much to those who had endured the camps.
In Eichler’s own developments, this influence was visible in subtle ways. Many Eichler homes echo principles of Japanese design: modular layouts, post-and-beam structures, open courtyards, and a blurring of indoor-outdoor boundaries that recall traditional Japanese architecture eichlernetwork.com. It was a natural harmony – mid-century modernism and Eastern design both valued simplicity, honest materials, and connection to nature. Japanese-American craftsmen working on Eichler projects found that their cultural architectural sensibilities (for example, the idea of a garden atrium or sliding wall panels) were not only welcome but celebrated. The human stories of these craftsmen – from internees turned builders, to artists weaving their culture into modern design – added an intangible warmth to Eichler’s cool glass-and-wood structures. Every nail hammered and beam set in place carried an unspoken dedication to starting anew.
Emigrés and Visionaries – European Modernism Takes Root in California
Even as Japanese-American builders were finding their footing, another group of immigrants was shaping Eichler homes from the drawing board: European modernist architects and designers who had fled war and persecution. The 1930s and 40s saw a “brain drain” of architectural talent from Europe to America. As fascism darkened the continent, luminaries of the Bauhaus and other modernist movements sought refuge in the U.S. Many were Jewish or anti-Nazi and brought radical new ideas about design and living. California, with its openness to innovation, became a haven for some of these creative souls.
Decades before Joe Eichler built his first house, Viennese-born architects like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler had settled in Los Angeles, in the 1920s. Both were Austrian Jews (and former colleagues of the famed Frank Lloyd Wright) who injected European Modernism into the Californian context. They pioneered open-plan, glass-walled residences that were precursors to the Eichler aesthetic. Neutra’s streamlined homes and Schindler’s experimental designs proved that airy modern architecture could thrive in the sunny West Coast climate. Their presence also mentored and inspired younger architects – both American-born and immigrant – to break from old traditions.
One such inspired immigrant was Raphael Soriano, a Sephardic Jew born on the island of Rhodes in 1904. Soriano arrived in the U.S. in 1924, effectively escaping the brewing storm in Europe for the promise of Los Angeles. With little money, he worked odd jobs (even selling fruit to make ends meet) but harbored a passion for music and design sephardiclosangeles.org. Soriano put himself through USC’s architecture school, where he bristled at the Beaux-Arts traditionalism of the curriculum and instead gravitated to modern ideas. A pivotal moment came when Soriano attended a double lecture by Wright and Neutra – hearing Wright’s charismatic vision and Neutra’s clarity of ideas affirmed his own modernist leanings sephardiclosangeles.org. He realized he “was not alone in [the] desire to create new forms for architecture beyond the traditions of the past.” sephardiclosangeles.org Strengthened by this, Soriano forged a career designing crisp, light-filled modern structures. By the early 1950s, he was recognized as a “modern maverick” of California architecture.
It was natural, then, that Joseph Eichler enlisted Raphael Soriano to contribute to his housing developments. In 1955, Eichler hired Soriano to design an experimental all-steel model home in Palo Alto eichlerx-100.com. This house, known as the All-Steel House (or Eichler X-100 when later adapted), was a bold departure from wood framing. Soriano’s European modernist pedigree shone through in the design – it was sleek and technologically forward-thinking. The collaboration wasn’t without friction (Eichler initially placed strict cost constraints on Soriano’s design), but it demonstrated Eichler’s willingness to tap immigrant talent to push boundaries. The resulting steel house garnered national attention and proved that modern innovation could meet mass housing usmodernist.org. It was in fact one of the first mass-produced steel-framed homes in America and won AIA awards usmodernist.org. Soriano’s journey – from a Mediterranean island to shaping American suburbia – underscores how immigrant designers brought fresh perspective to Eichler’s enterprise.
Eichler’s roster of architects also included Anshen & Allen (Robert Anshen was American-born but of Jewish heritage) and A. Quincy Jones, among others, who were strongly influenced by the International Style and by European colleagues. Jones, though American, kept close tabs on global trends and even integrated ideas from Richard Neutra’s case-study steel houses and the Bauhaus ethos of affordable design eichlerx-100.com. In designing Eichler models, Jones and his partner Frederick Emmons emphasized open layouts and prefabrication techniques that echoed the work of Bauhaus masters like Walter Gropius. It’s no coincidence that Kinji Imada – Jones’s technical right-hand man – had studied under Gropius; the lineage of ideas was direct cooperhewitt.org. The Bauhaus belief that good design should be accessible to the masses found literal expression in Eichler subdivisions.
Meanwhile, other European émigré artisans contributed in quieter ways. Some were draftspersons, engineers, or interior decorators who had escaped war-torn Europe. They might have been among the teams preparing blueprints or choosing modern light fixtures and color schemes. For example, European-born furniture designers (many of them Jewish refugees) created the chairs and tables that filled Eichler homes with chic simplicity – icons like the Eames chair (Charles Eames’s family was European by way of St. Louis, and Ray Eames was influenced by European abstract art) or Scandinavian pieces that Eichler homeowners favored. The whole mid-century modern movement was an international conversation: Bauhaus émigrés teaching in American universities, Scandinavian modernists exchanging ideas in magazines, and California designers like Eichler’s circle putting theory into practice. As a result, stepping into an Eichler house was like stepping into a manifesto of global modernism filtered through American optimism. The open atrium might whisper of Japan; the minimalist facade, of Germany’s Bauhaus; the breezy indoor/outdoor flow, of California’s egalitarian promise.
Eichler’s personal philosophy amplified these influences. He believed fervently in egalitarian design and social progress. Famously, Eichler refused to impose racial covenants and instead welcomed minority buyers when many developers would not dwell.com. In fact, Eichler homes were sold to Asian-American families as early as 1950, when such inclusivity was virtually unheard of in housing tract developments. In 1954, when a white neighbor in Palo Alto objected to a Black family purchasing an Eichler home next door, Joe Eichler’s team responded boldly – they bought back the complaining neighbor’s house and resold it, making clear bigotry had no place in an Eichler community dwell.com. This progressive stance owed something to Eichler’s own experience as a Jew who had felt the sting of discrimination. But it also resonated with his diverse workforce of designers and builders – many of whom had themselves fled oppression or been treated as outsiders. There was a shared understanding that these homes symbolized something hopeful. Eichler’s “open door” policy in hiring and selling meant that immigrants and marginalized people had a rare opportunity: to literally build and inhabit the American dream on equal footing. This synergy of values and skills enriched the Eichler projects beyond measure.
The Hands and Hearts That Built Eichlers
On the ground, building a tract of Eichler homes was an intense, hands-on affair. It’s here that the often anonymous skilled laborers, carpenters, and artisans – many of them immigrants or first-generation Americans – played their part in this untold story. Contemporary accounts of Eichler jobsites in the 1950s describe a near-assembly-line efficiency, but also moments of community and pride. Neighbors recall how early Eichler homeowners would band together in quasi “barn-raising” scenes – men who had just bought houses helping each other build fences or finish landscaping eichlernetwork.com. Those men included war veterans and newcomers alike. In Palo Alto’s Greenmeadow Eichler tract, for example, returning GIs (some from diverse backgrounds) settled with their families, sometimes literally helping complete the tract after moving in. There was a postwar “can-do” spirit that anyone could pick up a hammer and contribute.
But of course, the heavy construction was done by professionals – and California’s postwar construction workforce was a microcosm of America’s immigrant nation. Italian-American masons, whose fathers might have come to work on New Deal projects, laid the concrete and brickwork for Eichler’s signature patio terraces and fireplaces. Irish and Polish carpenters, descendants of earlier immigration waves, framed the striking post-and-beam roofs. In places like San Francisco and San Jose, one could find Mexican-American and Filipino laborers among the crews, part of a growing demographic in California’s trades. And particularly noteworthy were the Japanese-American carpenters and contractors who, once barred from unions and confined to camps, by the 1950s had carved a niche in the building industry. As historian Ryan Reft notes, Japanese Americans “created the built environment as much as anyone else” in certain L.A. suburbs after the war. The Bay Area was no different – companies that built Eichler homes undoubtedly employed Nisei workmen. Indeed, more than a decade after internment, former incarcerees were re-integrating, and construction offered jobs that did not require large capital or credentials beyond skill and reliability.
Imagine a day in 1953 at an Eichler construction site in San Mateo. The sun pours down on a grid of half-built houses. Hiroshi, a Japanese-American carpenter in his 30s, deftly aligns a Douglas fir beam with the notches pre-cut at the factory – he honed such carpentry skills working with his father back in the 1930s, then sharpened them during army service in the Pacific. Across the foundation, Vincenzo, an Italian-born bricklayer, is laying the clinker bricks for a low garden wall, reminiscing how this new suburban landscape reminds him of rebuilding his hometown after WWII. Supervising them might be a foreman like Thomas Callan (indeed, a supervisor by that name appears in Eichler project photos eichlerx-100.com) who coordinates with architects on-site. Language and accents mix in the air – snatches of Japanese and Spanish, the lilt of European dialects – but all understand the shared plans unrolling on the table. They work efficiently, knowing these houses are meant to be affordable and finished on schedule. Yet there is artistry in their labor: the careful troweling of concrete for a perfectly flat slab (to embed radiant heating coils), the precise cut of a ceiling panel, the wiring of futuristic globe lights. Every tradesperson brought a bit of themselves to the task. For immigrant craftsmen, building these homes was not just a job but a way to stake a claim in America.
Eichler’s company valued quality and treated workers decently, by many accounts. Joe Eichler was known to walk the sites, chatting with crews and soliciting feedback. His respect for craftsmanship no doubt stemmed from knowing that great design on paper meant little without skilled execution. As one Eichler architect put it, to build these houses economically “you had to standardize detail and know materials well” eichlernetwork.com. The unsung heroes were those who did know materials well: the millworkers and cabinet-makers (some of them German or Eastern European immigrants skilled in woodwork) who fabricated Eichler’s mahogany walls and cabinets, or the glaziers who installed those huge glass panes that brought the California light indoors.
For example, Eichler homes famously feature Philippine mahogany paneling – that warm wood surfacing many living room walls. It was likely installed by Asian American and Latino carpenters who took pride in making the panels seamless. The terrazzo and concrete work for patios might have been done by Portuguese-American contractors, as Portuguese communities had a legacy in California masonry. Electricians from the Philippines or plumbers from Eastern Europe – nearly every trade had immigrant representation. These workers rarely got public credit, but their handiwork is literally embedded in Eichler homes that still stand today.
Cultural Exchange and Legacy
The convergence of these people and stories behind Eichler homes made the final product much more than a suburban tract house. Each Eichler home stood (and still stands) as a testament to cultural exchange and the American ability to reinvent. The Japanese-American influence imbued the homes with a sense of openness and harmony with nature; the European modernist influence ensured they were cutting-edge in style and technique; and the hard work of immigrant laborers gave them sturdy bones and fine details born of craft traditions. These homes were “modern adventures” for an unconventional breed of postwar homeowner, as Eichler’s early buyers noted eichlernetwork.com. Little did those 1950s families know, the adventure had begun long before move-in day – it began in the life journeys of the people who made the houses possible.
Emotional threads run through this narrative. Consider the pride and redemption felt by a Japanese-American builder seeing a family move into a beautiful home he helped construct, knowing that just years prior his own family’s home was taken from them by prejudice. Or the satisfaction of a European refugee architect, once told he had “no place” in the old country, now flipping through a national magazine praising the California modern houses he designed. And for Joe Eichler himself, there must have been immense fulfillment in proving that inclusivity and good design could go hand in hand. Eichler’s fight for fair housing (he even helped craft and promote anti-discrimination laws in housing) and his willingness to hire talent without bias set a precedent. “I really do think Joe may have been motivated by discrimination against Jews back in New York,” notes Eichler expert Dave Weinstein – Eichler knew firsthand what exclusion felt like and consciously chose a different path dwell.com.
By the 1960s, the legacy of these efforts was visible up and down California. In places like Palo Alto, San Jose, Orange, and Granada Hills, rows of Eichler tract homes sat gracefully under the California sun – each with clean lines and daring modern form. Inside lived integrated communities of Americans: white, Asian, Jewish, sometimes Black and Latino – a quiet rebuke to the segregated suburbs elsewhere. Children played in atriums and carports, perhaps unaware that they were beneficiaries of a broader social experiment.
Architecturally, Eichler homes have endured as icons of mid-century modernism – “modern homes in the California manner,” as early ads touted eichlernetwork.com. But beyond architecture, their human backstory has its own lasting resonance. The craftspeople, designers, and immigrants who built Eichlers carried forward traditions even as they embraced innovation. “We also learn the tale of…” many individuals, wrote one reviewer of a documentary on Japanese-American designers eichlernetwork.com – and indeed, each Eichler house contains many tales. These untold personal histories add depth to the physical heritage.
Today, when one admires the simplicity of an Eichler home, one might also reflect on who made it possible. It was people like Kinji Imada, the serene architect with a tragic past who devoted himself to creating homes of peace eichlernetwork.com. It was people like George Nakashima, who transformed scrap lumber and loss into artistry. It was Raphael Soriano and others who escaped tyranny to help build a free world’s dwellings. It was countless laborers swinging hammers, many speaking with accents, who likely felt a swell of accomplishment seeing a finished street of modern homes where once there was only pasture.
In sum, “Before they were Eichlers” – before the homes became known and coveted for their style – they were the collective product of human resilience and collaboration. The untold story of Eichler homes is not just about a visionary developer or famous architects, but about communities of craftsmen overcoming adversity. Japanese Americans who suffered injustice yet contributed to postwar prosperity; Europeans who fled terror to bring new ideas to American soil; immigrants of all stripes who quite literally built the American dream with their hands. Their stories, layered behind each glass wall and wooden beam, remind us that the true beauty of Eichler homes lies as much in the humanity that forged them as in the materials themselves. These homes stand as quiet monuments to hope, diversity, and the belief that good design can uplift everyone – a belief shared by all those who, in building Eichler’s houses, were also rebuilding their own lives.
The Boyenga Team at Compass, led by Eric and Janelle Boyenga, has built a reputation as Silicon Valley’s premier Eichler home experts. With deep market knowledge, architectural understanding, and a modern, tech-forward approach, they represent buyers and sellers with the same spirit of innovation and inclusivity that defined Eichler’s original vision. Their commitment mirrors Eichler’s own: elevate design, honor history, and advocate for clients at the highest level.
Sources:
Weinstein, Dave. CA-Modern Magazine, Eichler Network – “In Memoriam: Architect Kinji Imada (1927–2005)” eichlernetwork.com.
Baum Lagdameo, Jennifer. Dwell – “The Unsung Story of Eichler Homes and How They Helped Integrate American Neighborhoods” dwell.com.
Lange, Alexandra. Curbed – “The forgotten history of Japanese-American designers’ World War II internment” archive.curbed.com.
Reft, Ryan. KCET / PBS SoCal – “Redefining Asian America: Japanese Americans, Gardena, and the Making of a Transnational Suburb”pbssocal.org.
Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley – Biography of Kinji Imada (Oakland & Imada Collection) cooperhewitt.org.
Eichler Network (Blog) – “From War Internees to Iconic Designers” eichlernetwork.com.
EichlerX-100.com – History of the X-100 Steel House (feat. Soriano and Jones) eichlerx-100.com.
Sephardic Los Angeles – “Modern Maverick: Raphael S. Soriano” (detailing Soriano’s journey and education) sephardiclosangeles.org.