[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history, every weekend on c-span3. c-spanus on twitter at history for information on our schedule, and to keep up with the latest history news. ♪ >> the c-span cities tour visited palo alto, california to highlight its history. up next, we hear about palo alto's real estate developer, joseph eichler. >> when world war ii ended and many of the soldiers and sailors returning from their duty in the pacific came and arrived in california, they were enthralled

with the weather and what this place was like. this was at a time in the 1950's when palo alto was starting to grow. we have the population of palo alto more than doubled during that decade. the stanford industrial park and the industrial center and the growth of stanford university all drew people to this area. tech people, teachers, so forth. and many of them were attracted by the designs that joseph eichler was building in this subdivision, as well as others. joseph eichler came at the end and decided to go into the business of developing and building homes back home. he was a man who was an admirer of frank lloyd wright and hired some young architects to design modest sized track homes in the wright, --nk lloyd

of frank lloyd wright, and eventually built over 10,000 homes in california, including 2700, 2800 of them in palo alto. this is one of those tracks. these homes were developed to reflect the lifestyle of what california and maybe much of the country thought it would be like following world war ii. glass, the plenty of backyards -- you can see them here from the street -- can't see them here from the street -- the backyards have glass that open up into the backyard. the transition between inside and outside is sort of minimized. the 1950's were a tough time in the united states for minorities all over the country. in california, we equally experienced these problems. housing, quite often developers or real estate agents would shun or divert the attention of minority buyers away from their homes.

joseph eichler refused to play this game. and he wanted and was willing to sell his homes to anybody who had the appropriate funds. and so a lot of young employees at hewlett-packard and other companies in the stanford industrial park who were minorities, who were asian or black and had the resources, he was happy to sell his homes to them. the residents might complain about this influx of minorities, claim that the property values will go down. of course, joseph eichler's line was, if your property values go down, i will buy them back from you. he never had to make good on his promise because the values continue to rise. there is a misconception that he was an architect. he was not an architect, he was a developer. he would hire young architects

who admired frank lloyd wright's style of building. and he had a team of them. i mean, it wasn't just one or two, it was a group of them over 20 plus years that he was building houses that he hired. they all were admirers of frank lloyd wright, as was joseph eichler himself. really began its growth post-world war ii, in the 1950's. there were subdivisions of all types of houses. some people built the houses they were building prior to the war. but then the midcentury modern houses, whether it is here in the bay area, southern california had a lot of them. palm springs, the whole town was almost rebuilt in the 1950's and early 1960's. and fortunately for preservationists, the houses did not change. those buildings weren't torn down, because the town sort of became economically stagnant. they weren't replaced with other

things. so this is a style that was developed in the 1950's and early 1960's, and has got legs. it is still around. it is still very popular, especially with the younger homeowners. they are very interested in these houses because they appeal to their style of living much more than the houses that their grandparents were living in. >> our cities tour staff recently traveled to palo alto, california to learn about its rich history. to watch more video from palo alto and other stops on our tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. you are watching american history tv, every weekend >> although women notice -- nurses cared for soldiers as early as the revolutionary war, the official army nor score wasn't-- nurse corps

formed until later. the "army nurse, soldier of mercy" is a film celebrating the contribution of nurses. it aired as an episode of "the big picture" television series. ♪ ♪ cheryl: this is a story of military personnel. in the classical sense, however, it is not a military sry