One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of the Boyenga Team
With highest-level starchitect bling, the Eichler X-100 home has come to market. The “mid-century modern experimental” home at 1586 Lexington Ave. in the San Mateo Highlands is a one-of-a-kind time capsule, a love letter to the mid-century aesthetic, and almost as futuristic now as it was when it broke ground around 70 years ago. It’s on the market for $4.5 million.
The experimental nature of this Eicher is a matter of metal — specifically steel. In a spotlight article about the X-100, the Society of Architectural Historians explained that the home is “one of only two that developer Joseph Eichler commissioned.” His architects of choice were A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons. “Eichler meant it as the showpiece for his suburban development, the Highlands, in San Mateo, and when it was opened to the public for three months in 1956, as many as 150,000 people came to tour the ‘Steel House of the Future,’” according to the SAH.
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One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of the Boyenga Team
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
Jones had already built a steel house. His first, which broke ground in 1954, was for himself and his family. His goal with the building, in the words of the SAH, was “to prove that steel could be both economical and livable.” In 1955, Eichler hired Jones and Emmons to create a single-family dwelling using the same concepts, and thus, the X-100 was born.
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The name X-100 is reminiscent of a spacecraft, which uses some of the same building materials as the home. Inside the 2,190-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom structure, Jones and Emmons used “H-section columns and I-section beams,” of steel, to quote the X-100’s official website. Effectively then, the inside of the structure was created with an open floor plan, with no load-bearing interior walls. And Eichler wanted to push the “futuristic” nature of this design, choosing to fill the home with “advanced household appliances, some of them prototypes,” according to the 1956 Grand Opening Brochure.
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
But there is a softness here that we might not expect from a spaceship. In opposition to the hard, impermeable steel, Jones used copious sheets of glass to create (often permeable) boundaries between the home’s interior and the sun-soaked landscape of its 8,803-square-foot lot.
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Jones placed the home’s kitchen at the heart of the structure. To again use the official listing language, this decision was a careful one: “Rather than isolating the kitchen using walls,” this design allowed the kitchen to serve “as a connecting corridor between the two rear living areas.” Jones chose to place the main living areas (the three bedrooms, two living rooms and kitchen) “around the perimeter of the house to take advantage of the light from extensive areas of floor-to-ceiling glass, sliding and fixed (the house had no windows in the conventional sense). Even the front entrance was a sliding glass door,” the website’s history page says.
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of the Boyenga Team
As is common with mid-century architecture, the easy flow between the indoors and outdoors is part of the property’s charm. In this case, the home hugs two sunny garden atriums. The entire back side of the home opens to the patio and pool, which in turn overlook the forested Santa Cruz Mountains. On top of it all, 32 feet of skylights flood the interior with overhead light.
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One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5M after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
The property has obvious “cult of Eichler” star power (in March of this year, an Eichler sold for $1 million over asking; no one can deny the market demand for these homes). In this case, 1586 Lexington Ave. has special bling that will surely appeal to Eichler enthusiasts: Co-listing agent Eric Boyenga of Compass told SFGATE in an email that the Eichler X-100 “has been widely featured in the press since its debut in 1956,” with features in “Life, Popular Science, Sunset, Arts & Architecture, and Living for Young Homemakers, and was even showcased in a Universal-International newsreel.”
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
One of only two experimental Eichler homes, 1586 Lexington Ave. in San Mateo is a rare historic property now listed for $4.5 million after a meticulous, period-accurate restoration.
Courtesy of Sabrina Huang
More recently, Boyenga said, the home has been profiled by the likes of “Eichler Network, Bungalow Journal, and ASLA publications, highlighting its experimental steel design and lasting influence on mid-century modern architecture.” The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
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Today, the property has been restored to its original condition, with the built-ins, Formica, rock gardens and cacti all period perfect, as is the staging with Herman Miller furnishings and accessories from Gump’s. All that’s missing is Betty Draper in the perfectly preserved kitchen. “The Eichler X-100 is pure ‘House of Tomorrow’ mid-century modern — a bold mash-up of Case Study House modernism,” Boyenga said. For some new buyers, “tomorrow” could be as soon as today.