If your family was living in East Long Beach when you were born, these were the homes you grew up in. They’re fairly close in exterior appearance and interior floor plan today to the day they were built in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. You could walk around in the place blindfolded.

Many, if not most, of the homes, have been tinkered with over their 60 to 70 years, as owners found themselves sitting on suddenly booming mountains of equity when the values of their $9,500 homes hit $20,000, then $35,000, then $50,000 and continued to climb.

Owners added brickwork and extensive landscaping, second stories, dens and family rooms, swimming pools and the homes and neighborhoods in the Plaza and Los Altos began looking less like the post-war housing tracts that they were, and a bit more like semi-luxurious custom homes.

The Plaza homes came in 24 styles with eight different floor plans and they, like their Los Altos cousins, were solidly built with raised foundations, lath-and-plaster interiors, brick fireplaces and oak floors.

Some had Thermador heaters in the bathrooms, and kitchens featured a wonderful creation called the ConverTable which could be configured into a breakfast bar, a dining nook, a buffet or a desk.

The homes were built to be addition-friendly, with bracing in the framing to easily accommodate a second story and permit-ready slabs off the living room to expand or add a family room at a minimal cost.

These days, a stock East Long Beach home, whether it’s in Los Altos or the Plaza or their satellite neighborhoods, is practically a collector’s item. They sell for a relatively affordable (relative, that is, to the homes closer to the coast that routinely sell for double what an East Long Beach home costs) high-$500,000s and low-to-mid- $600,000s.

There are a few on the market now that are fairly close to what these looked like when they were built.

“I think the closest thing I have on the market now is the home at 3333 Fanwood Ave.,” said listing agent Brandon Caldarella, who specializes in the Plaza area.

The Fanwood property is small and at one time in history, before smallish residences were going for better than a half-million dollars, would have been called a starter home. It’s got a one-car garage, two bedrooms and a bath in 1,284 square feet of space. Small, yes, but again, well-built and should last another 50 years for whoever plops down the $584,900 asking price.

Many of the original amenities are still there, including the wood-burning fireplace and wood floors, which, if they’re typical of other floors in the area, spent a few decades protected in hibernation by the once-ubiquitous wall-to-wall carpeting.

“The prices in the Plaza have come a long way,” said Caldarella, though that’s true of the entire city and most of the state. “You can find a two-bedroom home that maybe needs some work in the $550,000 range.”

The homes in the area are trending with new, dual-income families. “The area is attractive to people with children because the schools are good and they’re close to freeways so parents can drop off their kids and hop on the freeway and drive to work in L.A., Orange County or the South Bay,” said Caldarella.

Farther to the south, you get into the Los Altos neighborhoods and Realtor Joe Sopo territory. Sopo will be springing a house onto the market later this week that’s close to the original model, at least from the outside.

At 1,192 square feet, the home at 1924 Marber Ave. is about a broom closet bigger than the Fanwood house, but it’s got three bedrooms and one bath and will be listed at $669,950. And, while the footprint and floor plan is essentially the same as it was when it was built in 1949, its kitchen and bath have been upgraded and it has air-conditioning and dual-pane windows. Plus, says Sopo, houses just go for more money in Los Altos than they do in the Plaza, despite the similarities in construction and amenities.

Simply put: “More people want to live in Los Altos than in the Plaza,” he says.

After prowling around some recently sold homes in the area, I managed to find one that still had a Thermador heater in the bathroom. You have your Holy Grail; I have mine. It was in a home on Ostrom Avenue (the O street in the series of alphabetized avenues that run through both Los Altos and the Plaza: Hackett, Iroquois, Josie, Knoxville, Ladoga, Monogram, Nipomo, Ostorm and Petaluma) recently sold by Ben Fisher for $692,000.

“I don’t even think the heater even worked. They just left it in because it looked cool,” said Fisher.

Doesn’t matter, because, yeah, it looks cool. Next stop on the quest: A working ConverTable.