“Helen was erased from the [Abernathy House] story,” Ramos-Ruiz says.
The couple initially saw their stewardship as a way to preserve architect William F. Cody’s modernist vision, but the story became about more than architecture. Rediscovering Helen’s influence — as both artist and design collaborator — brought its legacy into sharper focus.
Completed in 1962, the pavilion-style residence celebrates living en plein air with its swimming pool and ample garden areas. Indoors, lofty tongue-and-groove ceilings add to the feeling of spaciousness and provide a neutral backdrop for views framed by large windows.
Ellenbogen acquired the Abernathy House in 2006, becoming its fourth owner. He led a two-and-a-half-year restoration that culminated in the home’s Class 1 Historic Site designation in 2012. Subsequent sensitive updates of the 4,680-square-foot home have followed. Most sensitive of all, Ellenbogen married Ramos-Ruiz in an extravagant outdoor ceremony on the property in 2018.

Helen Abernathy’s grandchildren loaned this portrait by Robert C. Rishell to the current owners. It sits in what was once her art studio.
Last summer, they put the house on the market for $12.9 million. “The home will be bought by somebody who wants a living piece of art,” says Patrick V. Jordan, principal at PS Properties, which has the listing. “To me, this is a masterpiece. It’s one of a kind.”
Pacesetters on the desert’s social scene, James and Helen Abernathy commissioned William F. Cody to create a house that reflected their vibrant lifestyle. Given her well-trained eye, Helen — a painter, decorator with Bullock’s department store, and local art curator — collaborated with Cody and interior designer Noel Birns to guide the design of their Movie Colony estate.
She was Abernathy’s second wife. Though it’s unclear how Helen and James met, it’s conceivable they locked eyes at a party in Palm Springs. She was a fixture in The Desert Sun’s social section, and he often visited to escape the damp coastal winters of San Diego.
Abernathy came from a prominent Midwest family. His grandfather, whom he was named after, founded the Abernathy Furniture Company in 1856. James married his childhood sweetheart, Zemula, and raised two children while climbing the ranks to become vice president of the family business. But he had a taste for life on the Pacific Coast. With the children grown, he and Zemula heeded the call of the ocean breeze in La Jolla. She died in 1951, and James eventually remarried Helen, 16 years his junior.
The Desert Sun’s social editor spotted the newlyweds out on the town in late 1956, enjoying big-band songstress Ginny Simms at the Chi Chi Starlite Room. “The Abernathys will divide their time between Palm Springs and La Jolla,” the paper reported.
James was in his early 70s and Helen in her 50s when they tapped Cody for a custom build. The architect was responsible for clubhouses at Thunderbird (1950s), Tamarisk (1952), and Eldorado (1959) and residential commissions including the Perlberg (1952) and Shamel (1961) retreats.
Cody mapped out the residence as a series of five pavilions. Bronze front doors open to the 26-foot-high central pavilion, where glass and wood walls frame the original living room, now updated with more efficient glazing. A large chimney rises from the hearth at the center of the north side. Sunlight floods in through tall sliding glass doors and windows. The pyramidal roof seems to float above clerestory windows.
“Although this house doesn’t necessarily seek to minimize the division between the interior and the exterior in the style of many midcentury homes, Cody minimizes the window framing to the point of near invisibility,” the historic site nomination states.

A pair of Maurice Pré chairs with Hermès upholstery invite conversation in a sunny corner. Hand chair by Pedro Friedeberg.

A ceramic mural by Stan Bitters adds color to the outdoor pavilion. A marble elephant takes a dip.
Two L-shaped wings adjoin the central pavilion at the northwest corner and two others at the southeast, their hipped roofs clad in shake shingles. Viewed from above, the wings radiate like a pinwheel. The west wing housed the dining room, kitchen, and an art studio for Helen. The east wing had the library/den, and the south wing had the primary suite. The northernmost wing served as a carport. Painted slump stone and sections of scored wood siding add contrast to the exterior, with a pergola structure wrapping around most of the house, shading small patios. The pool and its lounge area stretched out from the southwest corner of the main pavilion. Ellenbogen replaced the textured concrete hardscaping with terrazzo.
“When I first saw this, it looked very much like a Paul Trousdale house, with terrazzo as far as the eye could see — that kind of perfect indoor-outdoor living [that] to me epitomizes the optimism of midcentury architecture,” Ellenbogen says. “I always loved those houses.”
A Los Angeles native who became an entertainment industry executive, Ellenbogen had solid credentials for the project. He’d previously completed restorations of architect Carl Maston’s house off the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles and Frank Sinatra’s Twin Palms estate in Palm Springs. Restoring houses “is a little bit of a bad habit, which I’m trying to cure myself of,” he says, laughing. His actions say otherwise — he recently acquired the Blankenhorn/Gilmore home, a Class 1 Historic Site at Smoke Tree Ranch.
For the Abernathy restoration, Ellenbogen consulted with New York architects Michael Haverland and Thomas Morbitzer and designer Darren Brown when reconfiguring the house to its present layout with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. Research in the Cody archive at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, gave them an understanding of the original design. Besides interior room redefinition, they attacked the landscaping, where a tamarisk had put down a large network of roots.

Art by Philip and Kelvin LaVerne hangs over the fireplace alongside two Javanese carved stone statues. Coffee table by Monteverdi Young.
While working on the Donald and Marilynn Wexler residence a few blocks away, Brown developed a custom exterior color he dubbed Wexler White, a “putty taupe,” as he describes it. “We applied it here for a softer, more subtle [Brunello] Cucinelli story — a triumph!”
Careful study of Cody’s plans revealed part of the wraparound pergola was missing in front.
“When we found the drawings, we realized that it must have deteriorated, and they just took them down,” Ellenbogen says. “You wouldn’t know unless you knew. That was part of the restoration.”
The kitchen features Gaggenau appliances, Poggenpohl cabinetry, and a textured tile backsplash with a shimmering pop of green by ceramic artist Stan Bitters.
“Cody homes were always grander than the utility of homes of, say, Wexler. So a grand kitchen didn’t feel out of step with his philosophy as it would apply to our current times,” Brown notes. “Innovations in lighting allowed us to light the kitchen with pin spots with apertures the size of a nickel, signaling to modern times and the future of this home.”
Outside, the motor court was expanded with a second carport, and solar panels were discreetly installed on south-facing rooftops to avoid disrupting Cody’s signature thin roofline.
Ellenbogen and Ramos-Ruiz — who studied architecture and urban planning at Kansas State University and now works as an impact investor and advisor — have routinely made the Abernathy House available for Modernism Week tours as well as for “every architecture and preservation-related cause,” Ellenbogen says.

In the kitchen, a backsplash by artist Stan Bitters lends a whimsical texture to the space.

A vintage Nelson dining table and Wegner chairs bask in the dappled light. Black-and-white photograph by An-My Lê and abstract art by William Klein.
Helen would have loved showing it off, but her time in the home was tragically short. Just a year after its completion, and two weeks after a celebratory reception and showing of her paintings in Los Angeles, she died unexpectedly in a Bakersfield hospital. She was 56 years old.
Her passing left James Abernathy a widower again. Soon after, he remarried another painter, Magdalen “Madge” Phillips. She’d previously exhibited alongside Helen at the La Quinta Hotel (now La Quinta Resort & Club). Madge was still married to another man in the summer of 1964 when she spent six weeks in Honolulu. That September, The Desert Sun heralded her return: “Madge is planning a perfect orgy of painting for the season,” readers were informed. She had other plans in mind, too — by November, she had quietly divorced Mr. Phillips and slipped off to Las Vegas for a “surprise marriage” to Abernathy, according to the paper.
“Madge, we surmise, basically turned Helen into a nonperson,” Ellenbogen says.
“Even in the process to get the Class 1 designation, all you really heard about was Madge in the documents,” Ramos-Ruiz says.
James Abernathy died in 1980, but Madge remained in the house until 1991. Sixty-three years after its completion, the most important feature on the premises may very well be the portrait of Helen Abernathy, painted in 1963 just months before her death. Her auburn hair, streaked with gray, is pulled back, revealing a broad forehead and gleaming blue eyes. A serene smile hints at her sense of pride in the house — and, perhaps, at the creative spirit that still lingers in the shadow of the San Jacinto Mountains.
Ellenbogen promised to return the portrait to the grandsons. “Although,” he muses, “if the new owners are stewards like us, I imagine they would be happy to have it stay.”