111 East
ICONICA
Take away your midcentury modernism and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more iconic structure in Palm Springs than El Mirador Tower. Its incredible story begins New Year’s Eve, 1928, when Hollywood celebrities and local businessmen converged on El Mirador Hotel to celebrate the opening of the grandest resort in Palm Springs. The 20-acre property had an Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis courts, stables, and the Coachella Valley’s first golf course. The hotel’s 165 rooms would accommodate a who’s who of guests: Albert Einstein, John Barrymore, Salvador Dalí, Shirley Temple, H.G. Wells, Charles Chaplin, and Charles Howard, owner of the racehorse Seabiscuit.
The hotel, which was built by Colorado developer Prescott Thresher Stevens and designed by L.A. architects Walker & Eisen, sunk into debt after the 1929 stock market crash and was sold at auction for $300,000 in 1932. A decade later, when the United States entered World War II, the army bought and converted the hotel into the 1,600-bed Torney General Hospital, and the small Desert Hospital opened on adjacent grounds. It became a hotel again in the 1950s and ’60s until new owner John Conte transformed part of the development into a television studio. In 1972, Desert Hospital bought the entire property and eventually expanded into the modern campus of Desert Regional Medical Center.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NALANI HERNANDEZ-MELO
From top: El Mirador Hotel became Torney General Hospital during World War II; the bell tower is now a landmark for Desert Regional Medical Center; Albert Einstein was among the hotel’s earliest guests. (Vintage photos courtesy Palm Springs Life Archives).
Throughout all the changes, the property’s Spanish-Colonial Revival-style bell tower stood the test of time and became a city landmark.
In 1982, the original El Mirador Hotel and Tower were added to the National Register of Historic Places. But fire destroyed both of them in 1989. Fortunately, the original Walker & Eisen plans survived, and the hospital board reconstructed and reopened the tower in 1991.
El Mirador Tower remains an icon at the 387-bed acute-care hospital, the Coachella Valley’s only trauma center that also includes the Institute of Clinical Orthopedics and Neurosciences, Joslin Diabetes Center, El Mirador Imaging Center, Advanced Primary Stroke Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center, and in- and outpatient rehabilitation.