william f cody architecture

Modernism Meets The Desert

The architecture of William F. Cody introduced a fresh way of life and leisure, signaling new possibilities for this stunning environment.

Don Choi Current PSL, Modernism

william f cody architecture

The Eldorado clubhouse dining room and terrace float above the pond and cart storage below, offering outstanding views of the fairway and the Santa Rosa Mountains.
© J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.

Of all the desert modernists, William F. Cody (1916–1978) is probably the one whose accomplishments most exceed his personal fame. Primarily known as a Palm Springs architect, he completed dozens of projects in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area as well as Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and abroad, distinguishing himself through an exceptionally wide palette of materials and approaches. During any given year, he was likely to be working on projects of widely divergent functions and styles. For example, in 1955, he was mapping out the angular, wood-and-stone Springs restaurant in Palm Springs as well as a rectilinear reinforced-concrete office building for Havana; in 1958, he was designing the serenely refined Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells while also working on the slickly commercial Hi Fidelity Unlimited store in Menlo Park.

Modernist architecture outside major cities was often derided as merely “regional,” perhaps interesting but only peripheral to the main line of development. In fact, the relative newness and isolation of postwar Palm Springs made it an ideal setting for the development of modernist architecture. Unbound by traditions, Cody and his peers were free to refine and exploit aspects of modernism in ways beyond what earlier European architects had imagined, especially in regard to the natural landscape.

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© J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
William F. Cody’s work was instrumental in developing the image of the city as a place of leisure and recreation.

Cody @ Modernism Week

Master of the Midcentury: The Architecture of William F. Cody. The authors — Don Choi, Jo Lauria, and Catherine Cody - discuss the book. Feb. 18.

Cody Court Historic Cody Homes of Rancho Mirage. See them at Tamarisk Country Club, established in 1952. Feb. 20.

Cody Family Residence Tour. The Palm Springs Preservation Foundation hosts a tour. Feb. 21

House Tour: Crank-Garland House, an Indian Wells Landmark Designed by William F. Cody. "The Lost Cody" home was originally designed for Filmore Crank and Beverly Garland. Feb. 23.

These tours were open as of Jan. 20. Note they can change status to sold out. Visit: modernismweek.com

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WILLIAM F. CODY PAPERS, SPECIAL COLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, ROBERT E. KENNEDY LIBRARY, CALIFORNIA PLYTECNHIC STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN LUIS OBISPO. © J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES
Design rendering by Cody of the 1955 Earl E. Jorgensen Residence at Thunderbird Country Club Estates in Rancho Mirage. A drawing of Edificio Mateal, which Cody designed in 1956 for a site in Havana, Cuba, but was never built.
EdificioMateal Havana

Cody wrote no exhortatory manifestos and made no claims for the revolutionary potential of his designs. Like his Palm Springs peers, he preferred building over writing, and flesh-and-blood clients over an abstract audience or school of thought. As Palm Springs began to attract a broader population of visitors and residents after World War II, Cody’s work was instrumental in developing the image of the city as a place of leisure and recreation.

Amid the postwar revival of the country club, Cody was one of the first architects to design modernist clubhouses, and, perhaps more important, contribute to a new model of development. At Thunderbird Country Club, he suggested to developer Johnny Dawson and golf course designer Lawrence Hughes that residential lots be planned along the course with no obstructions between house and fairway. At Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells, Cody completed a 53,000-square-foot clubhouse in 1959; according to an Eldorado advertisement, “Gentleman Gene Sarazen likened it to the Palace at Versailles.” Such was the prestige of the club that it hosted the Ryder Cup in 1959 and welcomed former president Eisenhower as a winter guest and honorary club member in 1961.

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The view from the Eldorado clubhouse foyer toward the dining room exemplifies the use of open screen walls.

Cody’s elegant clubhouse design announced Eldorado as an unequivocally modern setting for golf and socializing. Looking out over perfect greens from its brilliant white veranda, the Santa Rosa Mountains looming in the distance, its wealthy visitors must have felt that they had entered a kind of modern paradise, an oasis of leisure in the desert.

Rather than design prototypical structures, Cody saw each project as an opportunity to address particular circumstances. On occasion he designed multiunit developments with standardized plans, but he still created variety through site planning and subtle variations. For example, instead of being lined up in rows, the propeller-shaped units of L’Horizon Hotel (1952) are irregularly placed to secure views and ensure privacy. The layout also shows that Cody was as comfortable working with free angles as he was with the conventional rectangular grid so typical to modernism.

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© J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
The entry arcade, with columns resting on pedestals in a reflecting pool and sculpture by Bernard Zimmerman, was the signature feature of the Palm Springs Spa, which was demolished with its adjoining hotel in 2014 to clear the way for the new Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza.

The design for St. Theresa Catholic Church in Palm Springs was perhaps his most personally important commission, demonstrating how his modernist principles could produce a profoundly spiritual space.

He also preferred his buildings to engage nature, defying criticism about the industrial, impersonal qualities of modernism. The Shamel Residence, for example, incorporated nature in many ways. At the entry, a shallow pool extended from outside to inside, connecting the exterior to a spacious atrium open to the sky. Inside, planters and small rectangular gardens dotted the plan. From the living room at the back of the house, residents would have looked out over a garden and the pool to the green of the golf course and to the mountains beyond.

Cody’s relationship with nature was intertwined with his pursuit of transparency and lightness — qualities fundamental to the modernist reaction against historical masonry structures.

At the time, Palm Springs was fertile ground for the development of steel-framed houses, especially after Richard Neutra’s sublime design for the home of Edgar Kaufmann in 1947. Cody designed an addition to the Kaufmann Residence in 1963 forJoseph and Nelda Linsk, who had purchased it from the Kaufmann estate.

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At the front entrance of St. Theresa Catholic Church in Palm Springs, two pairs of doors are sheltered by a canopy whose curved wooden supports play off the forms of the concrete walls. Inside the church, the four surfaces of the ceiling rise above the sanctuary to frame a skylight.
Cody used steel frequently and creatively, and the Shamel Residence was recognized with the American Institute of Steel Construction’s Architectural Award of Excellence in 1965. However, steel was only one material in Cody’s palette. In the architect’s own residence, the willowy steel columns contrast with the thick, low-tech adobe wall that surrounds the house and with the wood surfaces of the ceiling and walls.
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DARREN BRADLEY. © J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
At L’Horizon Hotel in Palm Springs, the open spaces and orientation of the cottages provide views and privacy for the occupants.

Of all of the myths of modernism, perhaps the most deeply seated is that modernist architecture was intended to be functionalist above all, bereft of ornament — a revolution against the historical styles that they felt were vitiating modern culture. However, even though Cody believed that faux-historical ornament had no place in the clear air and new era of the Coachella Valley, he frequently shaped basic architectural or functional elements into expressive forms.

Cody may have been a modernist, but he was no minimalist. He understood that the experience of any given building far exceeded its utilitarian roles.

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© J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
At the Jennings B. and Anna Shamel Residence in Indian Wells, the roof structure protects the interior  from direct sun and provides shade over the patio, pocket gardens, and part of the pool.

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© J. PAUL GETTY TRUST. JULIUS SHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
Seen from just inside the front door of the Shamel Residence, the fireplace and a garden separate the living room on the left from the stone wall of the primary bedroom to the right.

The Eldorado clubhouse, for instance, was not simply a collection of places to drink, dress, and socialize; it was an expression of a new kind of life and leisure, and of the unique possibilities of this striking desert environment.

Because of Cody’s strong presence in Palm Springs, it is tempting to label him as a desert modernist, a regional architect who worked on the periphery in Southern California. For Cody, though, this environment perfectly suited his desire to create architecture free of the cultural constraints of established metropolitan centers. In the Coachella Valley, he could develop modern architecture for its own sake, and show how a geographically and culturally isolated place could support the full flowering of modernist ideals.

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The back of the Shamel Residence faces the 10th and 13th fairways, without architectural features to interrupt the views of Eldorado’s golf course and the mountains beyond.

Excerpted and adapted from Master of the Midcentury: The Architecture of William F. Cody (The Monacelli Press).

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