At the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and Via Lola, in Palm Springs’ Uptown Design District, a smart contemporary office building is actually a progressive piece of modern architecture.
Designed more than 70 years ago by the firm of Clark & Frey and built by J.P. Seeburg (of jukebox fame) as a corner drugstore with seasonal apartments above, it is currently prime office space anchored by Coldwell Banker on the ground floor with a unique, private home sprawling over the top.
Anyone who has ever ridden the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway has already seen the ultimate collaboration between Frey and Clark. Frey designed the sleek utilitarian building that straddles Chino Canyon at its base, with its massive triangular windows staring up at Mount San Jacinto. The rustic-modern ski lodge at the top was built by E. Stewart Williams, with Clark as the architect overseeing it all.
Frey is a name you hear often amongst architecture hounds visiting Palm Springs. Clark, not so much. While coffee table books, documentaries, and drive-by tours celebrate the works of Frey, Clark, his contemporary and collaborator, sometimes seems forgotten. But together the two helped build the town of Palm Springs.
The Frey-Clark building was originally the Palm Springs Medical Clinic, fronted by a drug store; upstairs were the Las Palmas Apartments, says the building’s owner, Dennis Cunningham. “It’s probably one of the better buildings as far as authentic that is still left,” Cunningham says. “It just hasn’t gotten much attention.”
PHOTO COURTESY DENNIS CUNNINGHAM
This photo shows the building when it originally housed the Palm Springs Clinic with an MRI machine, doctors offices, and a pharmacy. Upstairs were Las Palmas Apartments.
When Cunningham, a real estate developer, purchased and renovated the Frey-Clark office building 13 years ago, he noted the neighborhood was not the example of the city’s renaissance that it is now. The neighborhood might have been old but it had great architectural bones. Today, the district is filled with chic boutiques and high-end vintage furniture stores. Style hunters come from all over the world for good shopping and great architecture.
An affable raconteur, Cunningham likes to joke that he moved to Palm Springs from Santa Barbara 30 years ago because he got a flat tire and never left. He and his wife, Cheryl, founded Palm Springs Modern Homes and built the first new multifamily dwellings in town in nearly 30 years, Cunningham says. This helped launch the building boom that continues today. In keeping with the style of his other developments like 48@Baristo, 48@Amado, and 64@TheRiv, he’s renamed his Frey-Clark building “6@Via Lola,” with the company’s art-filled offices at the back of the site.
The offices and home above reflect the couple’s summers spent in Santa Fe “camping” in a pristinely vintage Airstream trailer, now playfully parked out back. The 1974 Airstream “Tradewind” is a nod to the building’s streamline industrial heritage.
The couple’s living room is an open-air patio, complete with fire pit and bocce balls that Cunningham likens to the upper deck at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House.
The build's poured concrete structure is one reason why it has held up over the years.
“It’s a gloriette,” he says, referencing the architectural term Neutra used to sneak in a forbidden second story on the home in Vista Las Palmas. The indoor-outdoor space has been the site of many Modernism Week parties in the last few years.
“The elevator to the second floor was put in by the [Desert Regional] hospital, when they had their offices upstairs and the downstairs was where their MRI machine and accounting offices were,” Cunningham says.
The Clark-Frey building is an expression of the two architects’ ethos. Made of poured concrete with large corrugated steel overhangs, it is sleek, sturdy, and suited for the desert climate. “This place is solid,” Cunningham says.