Now there's another reason to visit this oasis. Not that anybody who ever spent January digging out a snow-encased car needs many more inducements than those already supplied by Mother Nature. Average February high temperatures of 72 degrees. More than 300 days of sunshine per year. A location 100 miles east of Los Angeles, cradled in a desert valley and protected from coastal rains and L.A. smog by a ring of purple-hued mountains rising to a height of 10,000 feet. Paradise by anyone's definition.
Toss in the gazillion golf courses, terrific restaurants and resorts and the frisson of Palm Spring's history as a hangout for Hollywood's rich and starry in the 1930s through 1950s. The vacation plans practically write themselves.
But in the past five years, Palm Springs has become a magnet for architecture buffs as well. The little town of about 45,000 permanent residents -- a vacation spot whose reach also includes the nearby towns of Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta and Desert Hot Springs -- has become a hot destination for a growing cadre of architecture fans interested in mid-century modernism.
Spanish-style stucco walls and rippling red tile roofs may be the dominant Palm Spring building style. But scattered throughout the city are scores of modernist gems ranging from tiny office buildings and 1,000-square-foot homes to a quirky former gas station, an eye-catching city hall and sleek, multimillion-dollar estates of glass and steel. Thanks partly to a lackluster local economy, these buildings escaped the fate of being torn down when their particular brand of hip, 1950s modernism fell out of fashion between the 1960s and 1980s. Long neglected, they are back in style with a vengeance. Tourists are coming to ogle, and the private homes among them are bringing top dollar on the city's overheated real estate market.
Chicagoans live amid some of the world's finest examples of mid-20th century modernism, of course, including important buildings by the movement's high priest, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Palm Springs' modernist buildings are more modest: mainly residences and small municipal and commercial buildings by respected West Coast-based architects including Albert, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, Stewart Williams, William Cody and Donald Wexler.
These generally low-slung, glass-walled buildings, some with exuberantly swooped or peaked overhanging roofs, were ingeniously designed for the Southern California desert. Frequently built without insulation as winter vacation homes, their overhanging roofs shaded residents from the harsh desert sun. Their glass walls blurred the distinction between indoor space and the exterior landscape of austerely beautiful desert floor and nearby mountains.
Modernist architecture first appeared in Palm Springs in the 1930s and '40s. The sleepy village, much of it built on land leased from the savvy and prosperous Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, was morphing from a cluster of health-focused spas and hotels into a Hollywood playground. (The all-powerful film studios didn't want their valuable stars more than two hours away from Los Angeles during film shoots, and Palm Springs, a short ride away over the mountains, was an ideal spot for a quick getaway.) Palm Springs needed commercial buildings, and Albert Frey (pronounced FRAY), a Swiss-born architect who worked with Le Corbusier in Paris in 1928 before settling permanently in Palm Springs in 1939, supplied a number of them.
Using cheap, rough-hewn materials -- corrugated metals and concrete block as well as glass -- Frey's early buildings adapted the crisp, minimalist contours so typical of the emerging International Style to the stark Southern California desert. Fascinated by the desert's natural landscape, he frequently incorporated trees and rocks into his design. Dashes of whimsy soon crept in. At the entrance to Frey's Palm Springs City Hall, 3200 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way, designed in 1952 with associates including Williams, palm trees pierce the roof. The glass walls of Frey House II, the small home he built in 1964 for himself on the slopes of the San Jacinto mountains, are shaped to accommodate a huge boulder that divides the house's living/dining area and bedroom.
(Frey, revered by fans of Palm Springs modernism for his ingenious use of nontraditional materials, died in 1998 at age 95. He is buried in the intimate Welwood Murray Cemetery just beneath the mountains at the west end of Alejo Road in Palm Springs. Joseph Rosa, who joined the Art Institute of Chicago in September as curator of architecture and design, has written a definitive biography of Frey and analysis of his work.)
Sleek, ambitious modernist homes for wealthy vacationers, Frank Sinatra among them, began to multiply in the desert city. But in the late 1950s, residential development in Palm Springs took an unexpected and winsome turn. A pair of local developers, George Alexander and his son, Robert, decided to trade on Palm Springs' reputation as a glamourous getaway. They designed tract housing and peddled most of it as affordable vacation homes to middle-level executives and professionals rather than CEOs. They built more than 1,500 homes, many in the Twin Palms area southeast of downtown Palm Springs. Tonier models went up in the Las Palmas neighborhood nestled against the mountains slightly northwest of downtown. Their lead architects were William Krisel and Dan Palmer from Los Angeles.
"Alexander homes," as they are universally called in Palm Springs, are the light-hearted expression of Southern California's glamorous "indoor-outdoor" lifestyle circa 1960. Built with no-nonsense, patterned concrete-block walls and concrete floors, the homes came equipped with uninsulated walls, in-ground swimming pools and large, airy car ports. Floor plans were open, and floor-to-ceiling glass walls opened onto the pool and outdoor patios. Roofs, with deep overhangs to shade the interiors, came in shapes ranged from severe A-frames and flamboyant, upsweeping butterfly styles to more modest peaks and sedate horizontals. The houses were hip, the latest in "modern living.''
Long out of fashion, some torn down, others "remodeled" past recognition, Alexander homes are now among Palm Springs' most highly coveted real estate. Homes, some as small as 1,600 square feet that originally sold for $20,000, are fetching $500,000 to $1 million today. A new development aping Alexander design is rising outside the city with prices from the mid-$300,000.
After some initial reluctance, Palm Springs is making the most of its architectural treasure trove. Frey willed Frey House II to the Palm Springs Art Museum, which is treating it with the care it deserves. (Unfortunately, the house isn't open to the public at this point.) Three years ago, the museum established an Architecture and Design Council that currently has more than 300 members. It sponsors major speakers and tours of important modernist homes in Palm Springs and beyond.
Palm Spring Modern weekends, a blend of furniture fair and symposium held the Palm Spring Convention Center downtown, now draw 5,000 visitors to the city every February.
A smattering of shops showcasing mid-century furniture and home accessories, most of them located along Palm Canyon Drive and Indian Canyon Avenue north of downtown, have sprung up. Palm Springs Koffi Cafe, 515 N. Palm Canyon, is a comfortable coffee house that echoes their sleek, minimalist vibe.
"Palm Springs has always been a resort destination," said William Kopelk, president of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, trying to explain the fascination with Palm Springs' modernist past. "There's a resort mentality here, the climate, the fact that it really is an oasis. Later, the Rat Pack of the 1950s and 1960s took over, and the myth and legend of that period sort of merged into reality. There actually were places here where Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra hung out. The economic climate of that period worked to our advantage. People weren't tearing down these buildings and building strip malls or housing developments over them."
The era of Frank and Dino may have ended. But, like the melodies they made famous, their desert haunts linger on.
