America's Most Perfect Ticky-Tacky Suburb

As the standard cliche has it, Suburbia USA is consumerist wasteland where endless rows identical houses define a dreary landscape of dull conformity.  The anthem for that sentiment is Malvina Reynolds' song "Little Boxes," which became a hit for folkie Pete Seeger in 1964:

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

As it happens, Malvina had a particular place in mind when she wrote her anti-suburban sing-along: The Westlake District of Daly City, California, just south of San Francisco.  To wit:

Westlake has earned some unflattering nicknames over the years. Malvina Reynolds’ folk song “Little Boxes” was inspired by Westlake’s “ticky-tacky” houses, visible along the highway during a car trip she took through Daly City in 1962.

Forty years later, however, Westlake may be getting the last laugh.

Inspired by our recent discovery of the deliciously retro Italian-American restaurant Joe's of Westlake, Telstar Logistics recently spent some time surveying the neighborhood, and it turns out to be far more interesting than the stereotypes (and Pete Seeger) would suggest. 

First, a little bit of history about Westlake and its developer:

Henry Doelger was America’s largest homebuilder during most of the 1930’s, and ended up building much of San Francisco’s Sunset district. In 1945, he purchased a large tract of land adjoining San Francisco. This sandy, foggy area, comprised of pig ranches and cabbage farms, seemed remote and unappealing to Doelger’s advisors, who thought he’d made an expensive mistake. But his legendary business foresight proved 20/20 again– the postwar housing boom was poised to begin.

If there is such a thing as a “good” suburb, that’s what Doelger wanted Westlake to be – a fully planned “city within a city” of houses, schools, shopping centers, offices, medical facilities, churches, and parks, right next to San Francisco. But in order to be economically viable, the homes had to be affordable to average people, so Doelger and his company had to invent ways to keep construction costs down while making them attractive enough to lure buyers from the city.

Today, Westlake remains a middle-class place of freshly-painted little boxes perched on the hillside, one after the other, each with a late-model car in the driveway. But it all seems rather pleasant, and not so ticky-tacky.

Moreover, unlike East Coast Levittowns, the homes in Westlake remain curiously unmarred by later additions and remodels, and thanks to lots of loving maintenance and lawn care, the area's architecture now exudes midcentury-modern cool. (A chicken in every pot! An Eames Lounge chair in every living room!) Driving the streets feels like cruising through a time capsule of late 1950s America, with all the innocence and optimism that era embodied. And in 2006, that seems strangely reassuring.

Most tangibly, no suburban development looks this good after so many years unless the people who live there feel that they have an investment in the place as a community. Westlake was a success, despite the criticism it generated when it was first built.  Come 2046, it'll be interesting to see if the same can be said of the even more identical, even more ticky-tacky developments being erected today by the likes of Pulte and KB Homes.

"Little Boxes" by Peet Seger, 1964. (MP3 Download): LINK

Ticky Tacky Westlake (Flickr photoset by Telstar Logistics): LINK

Westlake (Daly City, California) history page: LINK

"Little Boxes: The Architecture of a Classic Midcentury Suburb," a 2006 book about Westlake by Rob Keil: LINK

UPDATE:
Additional information and lots of new Westlake photos can be found in an updated Telstar Logistics post, "A Return to Westlake."

 

(Westlake photos above by Telstar Logistics)

 

Comments

[Classicsat]

Things are cyclical though. 30 to 40 years from now, we will be pining for the sorts of homes erected in the 1980s to 2000s.

[Anne]

Say, do I see an Eichler influence here?

[TelstarLogistics]

Actually, I think some of the most interesting Westlake homes were built just *before* Eichler really hit his stride. The first Westlake development took place in 1948 and 1949, just as Eichler was setting up his own practice. At the very least, they were contemporaneous. I'm also told that Doelger's houses were generally of higher quality, in terms of the workmanship and materials used... or so the locals there say.

[Former Daly City Resident]

Well a drive through Daly City now looks like a drive thru an american post-war time capsule in an asian country. Every "corner store" or "neighborhood market" is some sort of asian market and last I read Daly City was the highest population of filipinos in one location outside the philippines. There have been plenty of marring additions and remodels - a lot of the houses now look freakishly oversized and forget about finding a parking place on the streets in front of your house as most homes house more than one family, or at least a few gernations, and everyone in the family has at least one car -- grandparents =2 cars; parents =2 cars; 3 or 4 kids =3 or 4 cars thats possible 8 cars per house where most 2 car tandem garages have been converted to rooms or living quarters which leaves the one care driveway and the street... I'll stop - because I could go on and on - once you start about the landscapes - which aren't being taken care of anymore...

[unamerican]

Those damn philipinos and all their damn cars. Way to go, arsehole.

[Telstar Logistics]

I have no idea what it used to look like, but I think Westlake is still looking just fine. It's clear that whoever lives there now still cares about the neighborhood, and caring about the neighborhood is what matters most.

[COOP]

Joe's Of Westlake was one of Anton Lavey's favorite haunts. We had dinner there with him on many occasions. I have a photo somewhere of Ruth & I standing with Lavey in front of that awful clown painting at the entrance!

[Patrick Austin]

I think the answer is that no, we won't miss the 80's much and the 90's/00's at all. Modern suburbs lack the sense of design and style that some of the nicer inner ring modernist 'burbs had. They'll get better as street trees get taller, but they'll alway be bland, featureless boxes dominated by gigantic garages. Suburbs have gotten to the point where things are a little too spread out to foster a sense of community, but a little too closely packed to allow any sort of sense of isolation.

Personally, I pine after the good architecture of these houses at the micro level, but not the macro level urban design and certainly not the larger scale urban planning that went into 95% of postwar suburbs.

[lance]

Wow - what a cool place! I'm going to need to find out more about this. Thanks for sharing!

[C.K. Eddlemon]

At least these little gems are interesting, in a retro sort of way. Some may have mourned the loss of a more traditional suburb when 'Little Boxes' was composed, but Today's 'suburbs' are far worse -- the have almost no character -- beautiful expances of rural forest and farmland are clear-cut for extremely high priced, ugly and featureless 'boxes' -- gated and mostly pavement and tacky driveways and seas of ugly rooftops.

[Texanromaniac]

Today's suburbs have absolutely NO walkability to them. If you plug the address of any house in any of the newer (1980's and on) neighborhoods into walkscore.com not a one of them comes up with a walkable score...they are all completely car-dependent. It's rather depressing to someone hoping to move into their first home to realize how isolating a suburb can be for those who might want to try being a SAHM in a one-car family!!
At least the older suburban neighborhoods (even the initial "ticky-tacky" ones) had local grocery stores and schools nearby...even if you had to drive to any cultural or social opportunities besides that!!

[dave]

I don't know where MR lived, but it seems that most of SF's housing stock is similar; fancy front and plain back - which is typical of American builder housing from the 19th C. onwards (think Chicago bungalows with face brick and stone fronts and common brick sides and rear). Of course, earlier people might have found that in "good taste" as that seems to me to have been a bigger concern (conformity and all that) in earlier era's than to her generation and not been as critical of popular tastes in housing either (since owned single family houses were still a luxury then).

Funny thing about Westlake is that is seems to be more urban than suburban to me; just a continuation of Sunset's little stucco houses in a local idiom or urban vernacular (much like, again, the Chicago bungalow which continue far into the suburbs and of which variants are still built today).

[Facaderens]

This house looks so excellent. Its the house for the real people. Keep up the good work.