19 February 2024
Modernism Week 2024
Modernism Week has returned to the desert. The eleven-day annual festival, celebrating midcentury architecture and design in the Greater Palm Springs area, features 350 events, including home tours in over 30 neighborhoods.
For its fifth year, Santa Barbara Designs’ umbrellas have graced the desert modern homes whose doors open to curious visitors from across the country. This year our umbrellas are front and center at three homes in three distinctly different neighborhoods.
Designed in 1955 by master builder Joe Pawling, known for constructing Wexler & Harrison’s most admired designs, the residence is notable for its one-acre “through-lot,” its walls of glass and, most importantly, its modernist post-and-beam construction. Actor William Holden owned the property from 1966 until 1977.
In 1957, Twin Palms became the desert’s first completed Modernist neighborhood, largely designed by William Krisel and built by the Alexander Construction Company. This home, on S. LaVerne Way, was built in 1962, and developed by former Hollywood executive Fred Stein. The architect is unknown, but the home’s expansive butterfly roof, and sun flaps at east and west eaves, are pure Palm Springs Modern.
Built in 1969, this home was designed by architect Harold L. (Hal) Lacy and built by Paul Butler. With a rare two-level design and a front-loaded pool, the home has the feel of a private resort compound. Jazz and pop music singer Keely Smith, who was a Sinatra pal and partner of Louis Prima, and her husband and manager Bobby Milano owned the home in the late 1970s. The screening room on the lower level gives the house a Hollywood vibe.
