One day, barring downsizing from a wrecking crew, every home has the potential for historic value, provided your home improvements don't erase history.

Take the Eichler. Please.

Using strong redwood lumber, but dubious construction techniques, Joseph Eichler built some 11,000 modernist homes, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1940s and mid 1960s.

Brochures and magazine articles of the era displayed the Eichler Homes with photographs taken from the backyard because the homes turned their backs to the street and transformed neighborhoods into a canyon of blank walls.

The homes' trademark walls of glass looked out into the backyard and to entryway atriums paved in concrete, space was heated with quickly antiquated below-floor radiant heating and their low-slung, flat rooflines were difficult to maintain.

Even well-kept Eichlers today look more like safe houses than homes.

As recently as 2000 home buyers purchased them not for their unusual architecture, but more for their large lots. The lots provided ample room to radically remodel or raze them to remove the quirky, sparse design of the experimental tract homes.

Targeting middle-class buyers of the era, Eichlers were originally released for about $25,000.

Today, while many have fallen into disrepair, well-preserved Eichler Homes can fetch more than $1 million, and at least two Eichlers (one of them built for Eichler) and two whole neighborhoods comprising 300 Eichlers have been submitted as candidates for the National Historic Register.

Some of the Eichler Homes' special value is an outgrowth of skyrocketing home values in one of the nation's highest priced home markets as well as California's kooky sentiment for anything diverse.

Yet it's difficult to think that even California's out of control housing market could generate landmark status for one of the latest new home trends -- modular homes.

Of course, that's just what they said about Eichlers.

When today's new modular home owners remodel, if they follow the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's "Ten Basic Principles for Sensitive Rehabilitation" they or their heirs have the best shot at one day living in a landmark instead of building in aesthetic devaluation.

The principles are based on the rehabilitation subset of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's "Standards For The Treatment of Historic Properties," which also contains guidelines for preserving, restoring and reconstructing buildings already deemed historic.

Generally, that means Eichler home owners can't put on a second story, repave the atrium with slate, tile or marble instead of concrete or pop windows in the front walls in order to get to know their neighbors.

Home improvements that help a house retain historic significance make it new while keeping it old in a number of ways, primarily by repairing rather than replacing. When replacing is necessary, new materials should match the old in composition, design and color.

That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't build in modern functionality. Today's retro trends have filled shelves with art deco and modernist products from lighting and plumbing fixtures to entire kitchens and baths that are a perfect fit for Eichlers and other homes of the era.

Mediterranean-style baths obviously work well in Mediterranean-style homes.

A home parts cottage industry has sprung up to support Victorian home owners and others who need new home improvement materials (with current code considerations) designed as if they are from another period.

The experts also advise performing only home improvements that fit the scale and scope of the existing home. Consider room placement and traffic patterns. If they are available, the home's original plans are a great tool to this end.

Likewise, replace windows and doors with matching style, double-hung windows for double-hung windows, doors of the same weight and style as the rest of the doors in the house. Salvage yards and architectural resale stores are good sources. Custom-made materials are expensive, but can help provide replacements you otherwise can't find.

Finally, protect archeological resources whenever possible, including stained glass windows, closet ironing boards, decorative ironwork and the like.

If you want to retain your home's history and related value, let the online "Illustrated Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings" be your guide.

Published: May 4, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.