Midcentury Modern Architecture

Palm Springs has the finest collection of preserved midcentury modern architecture in the United States. From the late 1940s through the 1970s, the town attracted the best modernist architects working in California, who built private homes, motels, and commercial buildings that have since become design classics.

The best way to see them is on a self-guided walking and driving tour using the Modernism map published by the Palm Springs Modern Committee. The Frey House II, built into a boulder on the hillside above town by Swiss architect Albert Frey, is the landmark example — Frey lived here until he died at 95 and left the view unchanged throughout. The Kaufmann Desert House by Richard Neutra, the Elrod House by John Lautner, and dozens of Racquet Club Road estates are all within a few kilometres of downtown. The annual Modernism Week in February includes home tours, talks, and bus excursions.

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A story
After World War II, Palm Springs became a testing ground for a generation of Los Angeles architects — Albert Frey, William Cody, Donald Wexler, John Lautner — who used cheap desert land and a wealthy clientele to build the modernist houses that had been theorised in European studios but never built at scale. The flat roofs, glass walls, and clean horizontal lines were a direct response to the desert landscape and the California light.