San Mateo Eichlers / Sources
Bibliography
Where this all comes from.
We are estate agents, not historians, and the right response to that is to show our sources rather than to write with borrowed authority. Everything on this site traces to something on this page or to the public record, and where we are relying on a single source we say so on the page itself.
We do not cite our own other websites as independent confirmation of anything. Several Eichler neighbourhood sites share text lineage with one another, ours included, and quoting yourself back at yourself is how a guess becomes a fact. Where two sources trace to the same origin we count them once and say so.
Primary documents
Period material, in Eichler's own words.
- BrochureThe Highlands, San Mateo — price brochure The five-plan price and financing table, the standard feature list, the sales office at 2001 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, and the marketing copy. Dates to roughly 1959–60 on internal evidence. Freely available on archive.org, OCR'd automatically — read the scan, not the transcript.
- BrochureThe Highlands — architecture brochure Plans 101 and 1454, the full specification list, the awards including the AIA-NAHB Award of Honor 1959, the school and commute claims. Credits Jones & Emmons and Anshen & Allen. archive.org.
- BrochureThe Highlands — Yorktown, 1965 Claude Oakland; plans SM-3, SM-4 and SM-54; "the Yorktown" — the only San Mateo Eichler model name we found anywhere. The pool, the community centre, the feeder schools. archive.org.
- BrochureThe Highlands — X-100, 1956 The opening brochure. Opening date and hours, the full room programme, the sponsor product list, the design philosophy quotation, and the 2,310 sq ft figure. The single best primary document for that house. archive.org.
- FederalNational Register of Historic Places X-100 listing, 20 June 2016, reference 16000381. The nomination form itself — the highest-value document we have not obtained — is on our open list.
Institutional and official
Government, archives and scholarship.
- GovernmentSan Mateo County LAFCo City of San Mateo sphere of influence and the list of unincorporated communities within it; the Highlands Recreation District's formation, governance and service area. The authority on the jurisdiction question.
- GovernmentHighlands Recreation District Its own FAQ and About pages — CSA 1, formation date, funding, facilities, board.
- GovernmentSan Mateo County Planning & Building Historic Resources Ordinance, Article 8, and the Historic Resources Advisory Board.
- GovernmentCity of Palo Alto Eichler Neighborhood Design Guidelines, adopted 2 April 2018 — used throughout for the preservation comparison, alongside contemporaneous Palo Alto Daily Post reporting.
- ScholarshipSAH Archipedia Society of Architectural Historians. The San Mateo Highlands entry and the individual X-100 and Life House entries. Peer-reviewed — and, as we note in two places, carrying two errors we do not repeat.
- ScholarshipPCAD Pacific Coast Architecture Database, University of Washington. X-100 record, including its hedge on the visitor figure.
- ArchiveSan Mateo County Historical Association Not yet consulted in person. 300,000-plus photographs including San Mateo Times special collections, city directories, microfilm. On our list.
- ArchiveUCLA Library Special Collections A. Quincy Jones papers, LSC.1692. Reported to hold a Highlands item we could not confirm from the online finding aid.
Secondary
The specialist press and the community record.
- SpecialistEichler Network The institutional archive of the subject. Its Highlands history ("Hillside to the Stars") is the source for the elevation, the Aaron Green Arrow, the alteration counts, the CC&R lapse, the Whitecliff homes, the Chamberlain infill history and the Community Association participation rate. Its atrium history is the source for the E-5 / E-11 distinction; its 19th Avenue Park article for that tract's dates, architects and early social history; its forums for the eight two-storeys and the SM-series plan numbers.
- Specialisteichlerx-100.com Construction supervisor, first owner and purchase price, and the claim that the X-100 was the only steel-framed house Jones designed for Eichler.
- Specialistfogmodern Its 2017 Highlands tour report — roof types observed in the field, the rare 1965 Claude Oakland two-storey, and a third home-count figure.
- ReferenceWikipedia San Mateo Highlands, X-100, Highlands-Baywood Park, and the county NRHP listings. Used for the CDP history and cited alongside its likely upstream source where relevant.
- PressLocal press coverage, May 2026 The X-100 coming to market.
- PhotographySabrina Huang — all photography of the X-100 at 1586 Lexington Avenue reproduced on this site, used with permission. The X-100 is a private residence and is not our listing.
- RecordsPublic sold-property records The source for every sale figure on the market page. Single-sourced and not MLS-verified, which we state there as well as here.
Corrections
Four circulating errors we do not repeat.
SAH Archipedia's Highlands entry appears to describe the X-100 twice, the second time as a separate steel house referencing the X-15. There is no such distinct building in any other source, only two steel Eichlers were ever built, and the X-15 was a rocket aircraft rather than a spacecraft. We treat it as double-counting.
SAH lists Raphael Soriano among the Highlands architects. His only Eichler — the 1955 All-Steel Builders Home — is in Palo Alto, per two other sources, and nothing places a Soriano design in San Mateo. We do not list him. Full note →
One neighbourhood description credits these homes with central atria. The tract was built 1953–55; the atrium arrived 1957–58. We think it is boilerplate applied without checking dates. Full note →
An OCR artefact in the archived brochure. It is Bunker Hill, confirmed by transaction records and by Eichler Network. Records say Drive, Eichler Network says Road; we use Drive. The same brochure's "approximately 80 minutes from San Francisco" is almost certainly 30.
Found an error of our own? Tell us. We would rather fix it than defend it, and we date our corrections.
Talk to us
Correct us.
If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we will fix it and say when. If you have a document that settles something, we will publish it with credit.