The above clipping came from the Oakland Tribune on November 20th 1941. It shows a modernism home to be built in the area designed by architect William Raymond Yelland.
This is a pre-war design almost a full decade before the Eichler homes began to appear in the 1950s.
William Raymond Yelland, the Oakland based architect known for his storybook or period revival homes of the 1920s and 1930s would spend his summers out with his family in the Sacramento River Delta Community of Clarksburg.
It appears WR Yelland was toying around modernism ideas as early as the late 1930s. Some homes show up in the New Broadmoor Tract and Estudillo Estates Tracts in San Leandro as early as 1937. New Broadmoor was done by the Derry Brothers of San Leandro and it has long been my theory that Yelland was their primary architect. The existance of these very early modernism homes just strengthens my theory.
Back to Clarksburg, Yelland was friends with a young architect Carter Sparks. Carter Sparks was building Eichler style modernism homes in the Sacramento area with devlopers Streng Brothers.
http://www.eichlernetwork.com/streng_saga.html
As you can see from the article above from the Eichler network, Carter Sparks spent some time working for one of Eichler's favorite design firms Anshen + Allen. (The Eichler Network article was written by David Weinstein, an accquantance of mine and a real good guy).
So Anyway.
Yelland appears to have inspired Carter Sparks, who worked for Anshen + Allen. You can then see the link from Yelland to Eichler. If you see my earlier posting it appears that some homes (rumored to be Anshen + Allen) built in Alameda, share some architectural DNA to that very Yelland clipping from 1941.
