The X-100 at 70: Inside Joseph Eichler's Steel "House of Tomorrow"

1586 Lexington Avenue, San Mateo Highlands, CA 94402 Seventy years after it opened, the only steel Eichler ever built is ready for its next steward.

By Eric & Janelle Boyenga | Boyenga Team, Compass | Property Nerds®

He turned to his favorite architects, A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons. Steel-house pioneer Pierre Koenigadvised on prefabrication, and landscape architect Douglas Baylis designed the gardens. The house also had a marketing job: drawing buyers up to Eichler's new, then-remote San Mateo Highlands development above Crystal Springs Reservoir.

What Made It the "House of Tomorrow"

The structure is the star. Six steel bents, with slim H-section columns spaced roughly 13 feet apart, carry 8-inch steel I-beams. That let Jones & Emmons open the walls almost entirely to glass. U.S. Steel even advertised that wood would have needed 16-inch beams to do the same job.

Inside, the X-100 showed off ideas that were futuristic in 1956:

  • A prototype kitchen with a black dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a double oven, a built-in blender and an intercom

  • A two-burner cooktop set into the dining table

  • A rotating conical fireplace

  • About 32 feet of plastic skylights, plus track lighting and radiant floor heating

  • Two interior gardens with circular aggregate stepping stones

  • A metal-chain curtain in place of a wall in the primary bedroom

  • A swimming pool shaped from intersecting circles

Steel never replaced wood in Eichler's tracts. But the X-100 became one of the most celebrated experimental houses of the midcentury era, and it's the only steel-frame Eichler ever built.

Seventy Years of Stewardship

The X-100 has had remarkably few owners. Furniture importer Jesper Petersen bought it in 1957. It was then owned from 1964 to 2003 by Anna-Lise Pedersen, who kept it largely intact. In 2003 a group of preservation-minded partners bought it, led by Marty Arbunich, longtime director of the Eichler Network, who became sole owner in 2013.

Arbunich led the X-100 Renewal Project, a careful rehabilitation that brought back:

  • the open carport

  • the fencing and landscaping

  • the pool

  • the lighting

  • the wood siding and decorative gates

  • the chain-curtain divider

In June 2016, the X-100 was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The X-100 Today

Today the X-100 offers about 2,190 square feet with three bedrooms, two baths and two living rooms on an 8,803 sq ft lot, with views toward the hills and Crystal Springs Reservoir. It's offered at $4,498,000 and represented by the Boyenga Team at Compass.

For buyers who love Eichlers, this is the original experiment, the one house where Eichler and his architects pushed the idea of the modern home as far as it could go.

Read more about Eichler's personal story in our earlier post, The House Where Eichler Began, and the House Where He Dreamed Biggest.

See It for Yourself

Private tours are available to qualified buyers, along with a provenance package covering the home's architects, owners, press history and restoration.

[EVENT PLACEHOLDER: "House of Tomorrow at 70" anniversary open house: date, time and RSVP link]

Call or text Eric & Janelle Boyenga at (408) 373-1660 or email homes@boyenga.com.

Boyenga Team | Compass | DRE 01254725 / 01254724

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