You could pass right by a prime example of midcentury modern innovation and not realize it. You could overlook a subtle but inspired detail in an iconic symbol of environmental aesthetics. Or you could download the new Palm Springs Modern: Mid-Century Architecture Tours mobile application and become a well-informed aficionado of the local landscape as it relates to the heyday of structural design.
Palm Springs Modern Committee and Palm Springs Life partnered to create the essential guide for enthusiasts of the modernist approach. With properties including custom and tract houses, apartments and condos, inns, government buildings, commercial complexes, and even gas stations (one now the Palm Springs Visitors Center), the app lets you select from three tours based on geography (north, central, and south Palm Springs), 12 tours based on architects, or a user-created tour of “favorites” selected from the 83 sites covered.
Midcentury modern expert Robert Imber offers insightful text that includes background information, points out various design and construction elements, and explains the significance of the properties in the portfolios of the architects involved. PS ModCom founder and architectural historian Peter Moruzzi narrates the audio version of the tours. Photographs include recent and historic images (including some by Julius Shulman) showing both exterior and interior views. Videos accompany 22 locations.
While the tours include famous and lesser-known buildings and architects of the mid-1900s, a biographies section highlights 12 architects whose influence can still be felt and who helped bring the world’s attention to Palm Springs as a Mecca for midcentury modern style. Video accompanies six of the bios. Other features include maps and searches.
Here, we present a video showcasing the app's features and pictures of some sample properties. For the full experience, visit www.palmspringslife.com/psmodapp to download the app ($4.95) for your iPad, iPhone, or Android device.
TRAMWAY GAS STATION
(Palm Springs Visitors Center)
2901 N. Palm Canyon Drive
Albert Frey with Robson Chambers, architects; 1965
Designated Class 1 Historic Site by the City of Palm Springs. Originally an Enco gasoline station, today the Palm Springs Visitors Center welcomes tourists and residents to the city’s northern entrance and the entire Coachella Valley. Designed by modernist Palm Springs architect Albert Frey with Robson Chambers, the distinctive, soaring structure served as a lone beacon on the open desert, pronouncing that something special was ahead — something clearly different, optimistic, and exciting. Even getting gas could be a new experience. Boarded up and painted pink in the 1980s, the site was reinvented in the 1990s as an art gallery under Frey’s supervision. Though short lived, the gallery was instrumental in saving the iconic structure and putting modernism (and Palm Springs) back on the map. Yet another adaptive reuse brought the Visitors Center. Under a hyperbolic paraboloid roof spanning more than 95 feet, this inventive and iconic historic site is no less monumental today and serves as testament to an era of groundbreaking ideas and extraordinary accomplishment.
PALM SPRINGS LIFE ARCHIVES/PALM SPRINGS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COACHELLA VALLEY SAVINGS AND LOAN NO. 3
499 S. Palm Canyon Drive
E. Stewart Williams, architect; 1960
One of several stunning institutional contributions by E. Stewart Williams, this building has always been a bank. Visualize the front elevation without the recently added metal railings and ATM. Long vertical bands of bronze siding add an element of strength and confidence as it floats on a concrete base above a broad, shallow pond and a procession of fountains that provide kinetic movement and natural elements to the imposing commercial structure. In front, above and below the thin concrete floor, are two types of arches that create an earthquake-proofing system. In back, the parking structure and porte-cochere are original and part of the site’s historic designation. Don’t miss the poised finesse of the staircase suspended on the edge of the building’s southern elevation.
PALM SPRINGS LIFE ARCHIVES
TWIN PALMS ESTATES
Between Camino Real, La Jolla Road, and Twin Palms Drive
(accessible from Camino Real)
William Krisel, architect; 1957-59
In this first Palm Springs subdivision by the George Alexander Construction Co., these practical well-designed homes have worked perfectly over six decades. Each is the same footprint, with few variations. In a neighborhood appearing to be custom homes, each house represented a new ideal: a 1,600-square-foot example of innovative, efficient “merchant housing” — tract houses, but architectural. The Parking, Breezeway, Windows, Wall pattern started here. Some included tiny open-air atriums aside a tinier but distinct master bedroom foyer, bringing day-lit gardens inside. Clerestory windows framing treetops and mountains provide lighting but also privacy and wall space for furniture and art. Butterfly, vaulted, and flat rooflines over wood, rock, stucco, brick, and decorative concrete block mingle in a fusion of natural and manufactured materials. Front landscaping was included in the purchase price (architect William Krisel also was the landscape architect), but you were on your own in back — although a 20-foot-by-40-foot swimming pool was included.