In a city of peacocking houses, the Bel Vista tract designed by Albert Frey was never intended to attract outsized attention. The 15 houses occupying neat lots on a block near Sunrise Way and East Tachevah Drive coexist more like a modest cluster of finches than any visually striking specimen. When Todd Hays visited what would be the first of three Bel Vista homes he purchased and restored, its architectural provenance was not widely known. Nor did Hays have any inkling he was committing to an extended — and idiosyncratic — mission that has earned him a 2024 Architectural Preservation Award from the Palm Springs Modern Committee.
“It was a Frey but there was some question about it,” Hays says of his first meeting with the seller in 2012. At the time, he was scouting properties as a real estate agent on behalf of a client. Swayed by the seller’s adoration of the property where she had raised three children, Hays wound up buying it for himself. Research revealed that the modest 1,150-square-foot, three-bedroom structure built in 1946 on the standard 10,000-square-foot lot was indeed the design work of one of Palm Springs’ most beloved modernist architects.
A period photograph by Julius Shulman shows Todd Hays’ third Bel Vista property in its early years, shaded by a large tree and surrounded by a welcoming lawn.
PHOTO BY JULIUS SHULMAN, COURTESY TODD HAYS
Designed for the Masses
Planned in 1945, Bel Vista provided Frey with the opportunity to distill almost two decades of conceptual and practical experimentation with mass-produced, affordable housing. The topic was of longtime concern to the immigrant from Switzerland who worked under Le Corbusier in 1928. Frey’s plans for a minimalist metal house that same year established his interest, which he and A. Lawrence Kocher advanced in 1931 with their article “Real Estate Subdivisions for Low-Cost Housing,” published in Architectural Record.
The team’s metal-clad, future-gazing Aluminaire House then went on view at the Grand Central Palace in Manhattan. Frey’s 1934 stint as a designer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided another context in which to develop ideas about economically accessible, high-quality housing.
The Bel Vista tract — a Frey partnership with Palm Springs developers Culver Nichols and Sallie Stevens Nichols — became “a natural evolution of what the prototype of the Aluminaire could be in a desert city,” says Joseph Rosa, a Frey scholar and the author of the monograph Albert Frey, Architect. Rosa says Frey finally found a way to apply “the theory that he had come up with 15 years prior. Bel Vista is housing for the masses in a desert climate, and he was very proud of it.” It was the only project of its kind that Frey successfully completed, made possible with government-backed financing from the New Deal’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation.
A Decade of Restorations
“I could tell by looking at it that the bulk of the structure was intact,” Hays recalls of his first purchase, noting that the cantilevered carport roof, supported by four slender posts, had been enclosed; but the structure remained, along with other original details of Frey’s International Style–influenced work. “Not only is it Frey,” Hays says, “but there are 15 of them.” So Hays embarked on the painstaking process of restoring the first house, only to go down a path that surprised even him, an experienced remodeler and real estate professional.
After a comprehensive restoration, all the doors, inside and out, now match Frey’s specs. Hays even tracked down the Bakelite doorknobs.
“With no real intention of buying it,” Hays says, he went to see another Bel Vista property in 2015 that caps the south end of the subdivision. He overheard conversations during an open house, however, that gave him pause. Prospective buyers were scheming about extreme restoration plans for the property. “That one was even more authentic and untouched than the first house,” Hays says. Armed with the skills to navigate that particular web of financial and construction challenges, he assumed ownership in a probate sale and embarked on his next project, motivated by the cause of honoring this chapter of Frey’s legacy and the city’s heritage.
When a third Bel Vista house hit the market in 2022, Hays debated whether to tackle yet another daunting restoration. Ultimately, he heeded the call. Over more than a year, he tracked down matching authentic ivory-tinged yellow Bakelite hardware, a built-in ironing board that fits into the specific cupboard on eBay, a discarded set of double doors in a shed, and the historically accurate colors with forensic-like precision. He stripped the wood casement windows himself and returned the house to its original sea foam green and contrasting jewel-toned trim. Hays decided to keep some additions — the second bathroom, added in 1972 and outfitted with 1940s vintage materials, and the 1992 pool. He reconstructed the curved driveway, one of three that Frey envisioned on the street. Although the third house is missing its original cabinets, “parts of the kitchen are more authentic than the other two,” Hays says. Together, they complete the picture.
“This one to me was the most important one to be saved,” Hays states about his current home. It’s next to the first Bel Vista restoration, but it’s “flipped and turned — it doesn’t look like the same house.” Frey reduced costs and distinguished each property by staggering the siting of a single replicated design. Hays attests as to how that shifted perspective is hugely impactful. “I was dumbfounded at how different the house felt on the inside.” During construction, he’d walk inside and find himself turned around, knowing all the while he was essentially in the same house as the others.
“It almost took two months to realize that it was oriented differently. It is shocking how brilliant [Frey] was in doing this simple thing,” Hays continues. “You need these three houses to best understand the story of this tract.”
Frey’s Legacy in Palm Springs
At Bel Vista, Frey explored sophisticated design principles using readily available and affordable materials.
“We knew the aesthetics we were making, but the building department just wanted to know it was cheap,” Rosa recalls Frey saying, referring to work with his then-business partner John Porter Clark. “[It was] the same thing with Bel Vista. It was about, ‘An overhang is needed. People need to survive in the desert.’ It wasn’t about [being] compositional, even though it was compositional.”
“They’re modest. It’s consistent with his design philosophy,” says Peter Moruzzi, architecture historian and founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee. He also understands that Bel Vista is part of a continuum of midcentury housing across the city’s economic spectrum. “I’m sure for many decades, people wouldn’t have looked at Bel Vista [homes] and even thought of them in the same category as the custom, expensive homes in Las Palmas or Deep Well,” not to mention Frey’s later higher-end work. “And yet they are — they’re related.” Moruzzi also suspects they were purchased as full-time residences rather than second homes.
After his restorations were complete on each property, Hays pursued Class 1 Historic Site designation “really to protect the house in the event I croak,” he says with a laugh. All three earned the honor. The second two are listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places, building on research Moruzzi had completed. (The remaining dozen Bel Vista houses are too severely altered to compose a qualifying historic district at the local or federal level.)
Regarding the interiors, “I have very eclectic tastes,” Hays says, pointing to an Eero Saarinen Tulip dining set for Knoll and vintage art that’s historically simpatico but not orchestrated to create a time capsule. “I took the furniture from house to house and haven’t reinvented the wheel.”
Moruzzi muses that he doesn’t know of “many more people as passionate as [Hays] who are buying houses and restoring them anymore.” That begs the questions: How has Frey’s design stood the test of time? What makes Bel Vista worthy of the financial and sweat equity that Hays has invested in this trio of back-to-back restorations?
“There’s a central core, so it facilitates a more natural type of circulation,” Hays says. The compact hallway balances the need to differentiate spaces with economy of form. Early material and spatial use that would lead to a more seamless indoor-outdoor flow are noticeable, too. The outdoors is visible from nearly every vantage, and more rooms have doors to the exterior than was typical in the 1940s. “It’s not just all the windows, but also these virtually solid glass doors, which were unheard of at the time,” Hays says. “They not only bring … a lot of light into the house, but they entice you outside.”
Thanks to Hays’ efforts, these fundamental qualities again shine. “I don’t know what I would change,” he reflects as he takes in the surroundings. “As far as I’m concerned, what was done then still works now.”
mark your calendar
The Palm Springs Modern Committee will honor Todd Hays’ third Bel Vista restoration with the Residential Preservation Award on Oct. 19 at the 2024 Architectural Preservation Awards. For tickets and additional information, visit psmodcom.org.
