Buildings only tell half the story. The other half belongs to the people who imagined them—and, once in a while, to the family who knew them best. Hicks Stone—architect, author and son of Edward Durell Stone—joins noted architectural historian and author Alan Hess for a conversation about the design and legacy of the Eisenhower campus, one of the Coachella Valley’s most significant Modernist landmarks. Together they will explore the vision behind the campus, its place in Stone’s remarkable body of work and the ideas that gave it its distinctive architecture—a rare personal perspective on the architect alongside a deeper look at the history, significance and continuing evolution of this landmark of Desert Modernism.

Edward Durell Stone was one of the 20th century’s most prominent architects, with a body of work that included New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, Stanford Medical Center and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. When Eisenhower’s founders began planning a major new hospital for the Coachella Valley, they selected Stone in 1967 to design the campus—and gave Rancho Mirage a piece of architecture that thousands of people move through every year without knowing whose hand shaped it. Hicks Stone and Hess will place that commission within the arc of his father’s career, and within the story of Rancho Mirage itself. Fittingly, the conversation takes place on that same campus, in the 1981 Annenberg Health Sciences Building by E. Stewart Williams—a second master architect at Eisenhower.

This program is presented by local nonprofit Preservation Mirage and the City of Rancho Mirage, both official sponsors of Modernism Week, as part of Preservation Mirage’s tenth anniversary season. For ten years, Preservation Mirage has been bringing the story of Rancho Mirage to life by connecting people to its vibrant architectural history—through tours, talks, films, education and scholarships—and a percentage of funds raised supports that work. Ten years on, we’re just getting started.

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