On February 14, 1937 Grace Miller opened up her Mensendieck Studio at her newly completed Neutra House in Palm Springs. Join us to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Grace Miller House, aka the Mensendieck House, an important architectural landmark.

The house was built for St. Louis socialite Grace Lewis Miller. She was a teacher of the Mensendieck method of Functional Exercises and planned to build a house/studio where she hoped to interest Hollywood types in the program. Mrs. Miller asked Richard Neutra to be the architect. A lengthy correspondence with him followed, exchanging over 50 letters, discussing in great detail her daily routine and habits so that her new home would indeed be her house. It was a small house, built on a budget of only $5,000, and it was the first of three residences Neutra designed in the Palm Springs area. The venture ultimately failed and the house deteriorated after Mrs. Miller sold it in the late 1940s.

In 2000, when the current owner bought the property, it was so dilapidated and uninhabitable that no bank would give a loan. Word got out about a new, sympathetic owner, which prompted Julius Shulman to sell a complete set of photographs to her, and Stephen Leet, while writing a monograph on the house, donated a set of original plans. From these photographs and plans, the owner restored the house and even built an addition that Neutra had designed in 1938 but never constructed.

Now, 90 years later, the joint vision of Richard Neutra and Grace Miller is complete. This special tour on the date of her original opening will commemorate the 90th anniversary.