Wednesday, April 4, 2001

Limit: 47 people

This tour is partially wheelchair accessible

The winter desert is a contradiction, offering dramatic views and sometimes dangerous conditions. The cooler–sometimes freezing--temperatures of early April provide respite for its inhabitants from summer’s extreme heat, yet the stark and brutal terrain anticipates the return of blazing sun and temperatures to match. The animals and plants--some of which are poisonous–that have adapted to this harsh environment often look bizarre, adapting over the millennia to the unique and extreme conditions the desert presents.

Palm Springs garnered attention as early as the 1920’s as the new playground for the wealthy. Lloyd Wright (son of Frank) designed the Oasis Hotel in 1923-24 using Southwest and Mediterranean elements. In 1938, Richard Neutra designed the Miller House of steel and stucco, and in 1947 a desert house for the Pittsburgh Kaufmanns. Albert Frey designed a dramatic gas station with a large parabolic, cantilevered roof, collaborated with other architects on at least four Palm Springs homes (two for himself), and in 1963 collaborated with Robson C. Chambers on the Aerial Tramway. R.M. Schindler, A. Quincy Jones, Steward Williams, and Craig Ellwood, also helped shape the look of the resort. By the 1950’s film stars like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Lucy and Desi Arnaz, Bob Hope, and Jack Benny, along with film directors, department store magnates, and others who combined a sense of adventure with a taste for luxury commissioned some of the more daring architects to design modern shelters from the brutal elements. Even Elvis Presley kept a Palm Springs home.

This tour will include the Albert Frey gas station, Frank Sinatra’s first house, and Neutra’s Kaufmann House, conducted by Palm Springs architecture authority Tony Merchell. The first two houses feature rectilinear slabs of floors and roofs, glass curtain walls, and the essential swimming pools–Sinatra’s shaped like a grand piano. Lunch will be at the luxurious Rancho Mirage Country Club. During lunch, Merchell will give a slide lecture on the resort’s architecture. Afterwards, he will conduct a bus tour of other Palm Springs sites.

Free time will allow us to see the downtown Palm Springs galleries and shops, visit the Palm Springs Desert Museum, or see another house–possibly the 1968 organic Arthur Elrod house (with swimming pool of course!) by John Lautner, who also designed Bob Hope’s 25,000 square-foot domed house perched above the town. Or you may choose to take the Aerial Tram, but you must be prepared for snow at the tram’s top in early April!

Palm Springs offers some of the contrasts that are unique to the desert–cold with hot, light with shade, dry with moist, man’s artistic work with nature, closed space with open space, and the stillness and quiet of a Zen sand garden that encourages reflection.