Twelve miles down Highway 111, Palm Desert is not so much a city as it is the product of a few businessmen with a conviction for making money. At its inception in 1946, the Palm Desert Corporation purchased over 1500 acres of raw desert land, hired some of California’s greatest Modernists and town planners, and built an entire city from the sand. The vision for the “Modern” desert city was the result of a struggle between two brothers: Clifford Henderson, a skillful businessman behind the Pan Pacific Auditorium and the National Air Races, and Randall Henderson, the editor of the famed Desert Magazine who had an endearing passion for the arid regions of the southwest. Cliff wanted a resort city where his fellow members of the Los Angeles elite could frolic amongst his gleaming Shadow Mountain Club, and Randall wanted a year-round community for the year-round people who have historically given the Coachella Valley its charm. This lecture presents this story and the history of Palm Desert told through its architecture, exhibiting designs in Palm Desert by architects such as Gordon Kauffmann, William Pereira, Cliff May, Herbert Burns, Walter S. White, A. Quincy Jones, Albert Frey, Rudolph Schindler, Harry Williams and Tommy Tomson. More than being a comprehensive overview of Palm Desert’s architectural history, historian Luke Leuschner seeks to examine the larger social construction of the “desert” in the post-war period, and the transformation from the “wasteland” to the “wonderland.” It will feature rarely seen material from the archives of the Historical Society of Palm Desert, presenting a chapter of Desert Modernism and California history that is scarcely known.
The Palm Springs Preservation Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is “to educate and promote public awareness of the importance of preserving the historical resources and architecture of the city of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley area.” PSPF offers free membership as a public benefit. To learn more about the work of the foundation see www.pspreservationfoundation.org.