Atherwood · November 1950 · The first

Subdivision of the Year, before he had a plan book.

Anshen & Allen drew it. Architectural Forum named it one of four Subdivisions of the Year in December 1950. The other three were in Palo Alto.

What is mine worth? The butterfly roofs

An aerial view over the Atherwood area of Redwood City: low single-storey rooflines under mature trees, with the Peninsula hills behind. — Looking across the neighbourhood from above. Everything Eichler built here is single storey — which is why the tree canopy reads as the tallest thing in the picture.

The name is a portmanteau.

Atherton plus Redwood City. The tract sits at the border of the two, which is exactly the pitch Eichler was making in 1950: an Atherton address in everything but the tax bill, at a price a Stanford professor could carry.

Eichler Network places it ninth in his chronology of subdivisions, and it was his first in San Mateo County. He had been building modern houses for about eighteen months. The homes went up to Anshen & Allen's AA-1 plan — post and beam, a glass wall to the garden, redwood inside, and heating tube cast into the concrete floor rather than ducts in an attic the house does not have.

Alongside the Architectural Forum award, the tract was featured in Ladies' Home Journal in November 1950. For a production builder three years into the business, that is not ordinary press.

The four streets

Atherwood Avenue, Parkwood Way, Cedarwood Way and Oakfield Avenue — all 94061. Every one verified against county year-built records showing 1950, and tied to the recorded map.

That map is worth naming, because it is the primary source for everything else about this tract: San Mateo County Recorded Survey Map, Book 31, Page 39. A legal description on Cedarwood Way reads, in part, "LOT 16 BLOCK 4 ATHERWOOD RSM 31/39 CITY OF REDWOOD." If you want to settle an argument about whether a house is in Atherwood, that is where you settle it — not on a listing portal, whose neighbourhood labels for these streets are inconsistent and occasionally wrong.

An Atherwood Eichler on Parkwood Way at dusk, its low roofline and clerestory glass lit from inside. — Parkwood Way at dusk — an AA-1 house after a full renovation. The roof plane, the beam tails and the glazing pattern are the 1950 drawing; the rest is 2024. The whole project.

Opened: November 1950
Architects: Anshen & Allen
Plan: AA-1
Homes: 64
Butterfly roofs: ~10
Streets: Atherwood Ave, Parkwood Way, Cedarwood Way, Oakfield Ave
ZIP: 94061
Lots: ~6,000–7,300 sq ft
Original size: ~1,140–1,790 sq ft
Recorded map: RSM 31/39
Protection: None. No overlay, no HOA, no CC&Rs

On the home count: published sources disagree — Wikipedia and two sites that appear to derive from it say 64, while Eichler Network says 75 in one article and about 100 in another. We use 64, which is the figure that survives when you count the lots rather than the citations. Across the three tracts that gives 64 + 28 + 23 = 115 houses, and 121 buildings once the six Roble Avenue duplexes are added.

On the street

Four streets, one vocabulary.

Our own Redwood City photography, virtually altered, not tied to an address. For unaltered commissioned photography of a specific Atherwood house, see 1156 Parkwood Way.

A single-storey mid-century house with a wide fascia and wood front door, behind a mature sycamore. — Tree older than the houseAtherwood planted in 1950 and the canopy wonVirtually altered

A mid-century house with a double open carport, vertical siding and a deep roof overhang. — The open carportTwo bays, no door. The original Eichler arrangementVirtually altered

A white single-storey mid-century house with rooftop solar panels above a carport and a low-slope roof. — Solar on a 1950 roofA flat roof takes an array better than a pitched one doesVirtually altered

The covered rear terrace of an Atherwood Eichler at dusk, warm light behind full-height glass. — Atherwood · the garden sideNothing else on the street does this at night

An Atherwood Eichler living room under exposed beams and a painted tongue-and-groove ceiling, with clerestory glazing above the fireplace. — Atherwood · the section, insideBeams exposed, decking painted out, clerestory over the fireplace mass

The section

What the butterfly actually does.

Section, not to scale. The butterfly is structural, not styling: put the high edges outside and the valley in the middle and you get clerestory light at both ends of the house, a flat-ceilinged room under the beams, and one drainage point to maintain. Roughly ten Atherwood houses were built this way.

What has sold

Verified Atherwood transactions.

County-recorded sales, not estimates. Note the gap between the 2018–21 numbers and the last two years.

Address	Built	Size	Lot	Sold	Date
1135 Cedarwood Way	1950	1,448 sf	6,210 sf	$2,605,000	27 Mar 2026
1156 Parkwood Way · ours	1950	1,530 sf	6,030 sf	$2,300,000	17 Sep 2024
1104 Parkwood Way	1950	1,690 sf	7,284 sf	$1,675,000	31 Jul 2018
101 Oakfield Avenue	1950	1,170 sf	6,960 sf	$1,325,000	20 Jan 2021
185 Atherwood Avenue	1950	2,040 sf	6,020 sf	$1,230,000	22 Jan 2019

1135 Cedarwood Way listed at $2,149,000 and closed at $2,605,000 — twenty-one per cent over ask, in twenty-nine days. The same house traded at $67,500 in 1976, $821,500 in 2005, and $710,000 in 2010. It fell for five years. We include that because a page that only shows the line going up is advertising, not analysis.

Talk to us

Own one of the sixty-odd?

Atherwood turns over rarely enough that every sale moves the comparables. If you are thinking about it — this year or in three — the useful conversation starts before you need it.