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I wonder how much it would cost to build one of these houses today. I remember as a kid in the 60’s we would visit my grandmother who lived in Naperville, Illinois. It was fun to go through the model homes that were being built in the various new subdivisions at the time.. A new two story house like the Monteray or the Hampton cost around $35,000. That’s right $35,000–which was a lot of money back then.
ReplyDeleteWhoops, I ment to say $135,000, NOT $35,000. Sorry about that.
DeleteAnon@8:37am - No problem.
Delete$ 35,000 would be about right for a home at that time.
DeleteMy parents bought their Long Beach, CA house in 1967 for about $ 30,000.
$ 135,000 would buy you a mansion in the 1960’s.
I will take the Westover please---Those bedrooms look tight-How about we increase the depth of the home by two feet and the width the same---This will give us a little breathing room---
ReplyDeleteAn aunt and uncle + 4 kids (2 girls, 2 boys) lived in a Westover-like house built for them in 1960 or so. Their model had a basement area under the bedrooms, where they eventually added another bedroom. Somehow her mother came to live with them in her late 80s -- don't know how she managed the stairs to whichever bedroom she had.
ReplyDeleteSplit level homes were a big deal when home builder Eddie Meredith brought them to So Cal (1958-1965).
ReplyDeleteThe model homes and the empty lots at his tracts sold out in the first weeks of their introduction !
His 3 bedroom homes were larger than most at that time (around 2200 sft compared to the average tract home of 1600 sft.) Meredith was one of the few to offer 4 and 5 bedroom homes with three car garages and some even offered parking for an RV ! All of his homes featured built in appliances, inter-coms, central heating and air conditioning, and they surpassed the building codes of California in that time. (the homes were reinforced to North Eastern storm standards)
Before such homes would have to be custom built at great expense. Here you had tracts of semi-custom built homes with many floor plans and exterior trim options of all kinds. As a consequence Eddie Meredith’s tract homes did not have the cookie cutter look of other more mundane housing tracts.
Other builders followed suit and Meredith home knockoffs became a trend in So Cal.
Today vintage Meredith tract homes get top dollar in the So Cal housing market.
-Rj
Rj - Thanks for that background info!
DeleteI never liked split level houses, My uncle had a small house, with a big bathroom, he splited with a vannity and powder room. I think that was clever.
ReplyDelete