PALM
SPRINGS, Calif. — They came for the walking tours of Vista Las Palmas,
the neighborhood so popular with Frank Sinatra and his crowd that it is
known as the Rat Pack Playground. They rode buses up steep hills to
view the gemlike house built around a massive boulder by Albert Frey, an
architect known as a father of desert modernism. And of course they
could not miss the outdoor show of vintage travel-trailers and the
nightly parties in private homes rarely open to the public.
Before
“Mad Men” made its debut, there were the modernistas, as aficionados of
midcentury modern architecture are known. About 50,000 of them
descended upon this affluent town in the San Jacinto Mountains this
month for the 10th annual celebration of Modernism Week.
This
year, the events included an evening at Piazza di Liberace, which once
belonged to the flamboyant pianist, and a 100th birthday celebration of
Sinatra at Twin Palms,
where he lived in the 1940s. Now a tourist attraction known as Sinatra
House, the estate epitomizes the indoor-outdoor living that Californians
are famous for, only this one designed by the architect E. Stewart
Williams and featuring a piano-shaped swimming pool. Legend has it that
its famous owner would run a flag up the two tall palm trees to let
neighbors know it was cocktail hour — or “ ’tini time.”
“There
was a style and sophistication that I think men today don’t tap into,”
Chris Jordan, a 38-year-old social media specialist from Los Angeles,
said at one of the week’s big parties.
Palm
Springs has long been a draw for the jet set, but more recently, it has
been marketing itself as a destination for fans of its slightly
idealized past, playing up its credentials as a mecca of modernist
architecture and celebrity culture.
Images
of “butterfly roofs,” the angled signatures of midcentury modernism,
have replaced the golf club as the city’s aesthetic trademark, appearing
on bus shelters, trail signs and even on local KFC and McDonald’s
restaurants. Modernism Week represents an apex of sorts for the city,
bringing in what organizers say is roughly $17 million over 11 days.
The average ticket price is $60, with fund-raising events like the Retro Martini Party, a benefit for the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation,
costing $150. For devotees, the opportunity to open Frey’s kitchen
cabinets and poke around his property, albeit while watching out for
rattlesnakes, may have been worth any cost.
Hundreds
of midcentury modern houses have been purchased and restored to their
original appearance by fans of the aesthetic, and there are stores in
the city’s Uptown Design District — with names like Just Modern and Just
Fabulous — to accommodate them. Many of these homeowners first
discovered the city’s architectural wealth during Modernism Week and are
now active preservationists.
“It’s
the general public that has been the savior of Palm Springs,” said
Peter Moruzzi, an architectural historian and founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee,
which scored a recent preservation victory with the City Council to
turn aside a proposed expansion to the Palm Springs International
Airport that would have compromised the original design by Donald
Wexler.
One
couple from Bangor, Me., Russ Harrington, a real estate broker, and
Walter Gary, a hairstylist, bought a Wexler in Palm Springs as their
second home. They filled it with vintage midcentury furniture snapped up
at estate sales in Maine. “We paid a third of what it would cost in
Palm Springs,” Mr. Harrington said. “Nobody wants it there.”
For
Anja Pangborn, 35, who described herself as an “architectural stalker”
from Tacoma, Wash., the highlight of this year’s Modernism Week was a
public discussion at the Palm Springs Art Museum with one of her idols, Nelda Linsk, a local real estate broker who appeared in a famous 1970 photograph by Slim Aarons called “Poolside Gossip”
that is thought to encapsulate the Palm Springs lifestyle. For this
event, Mrs. Linsk wore a vintage bright yellow knit that matched the
shade of the terry cloth outfit she wore in the photograph. She spoke of
a sun-kissed era filled with stars like Dean Martin, Bob Hope and
Sinatra. “If we forgot a lemon for our martini, we told the butler to
send it up in the dumbwaiter,” Mrs. Linsk told the rapt crowd.
Cristina
Stasia, a 36-year-old gender studies professor at the University of
Alberta in Canada, keeps a framed blowup of “Poolside Gossip” in her
study in Edmonton, where the temperature last week was 5 degrees plus
wind chill, she said. For Ms. Stasia, an avid modernist, the photograph
“is a reprieve from this rushed, less glamorous time in which we work
18-hour days.”
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