Palm Springs: Hip, Hot and ’50s
Restoration of classic architecture returns the fabulous city to its former glory
When an acquaintance heard I was moving from Portland to Palm Springs, he shot me an e-mail asking, a bit derisively, if I would soon be wearing plaid pants and hitting the links.
“Squaresville,” I said out loud to myself. And I wasn’t referring to the image of me in golf attire.
Clearly, I thought, this guy was stuck in the ’80s, when the popular image of Palm Springs usually broke down into four categories: Golf, older people, older people golfing and college kids on spring break.
At that time, Palm Springs was in the middle of an economic downturn and had fallen into a state of decay. The only hip tourists were gay men; everyone else was a golfer or a retiree.
Now, however, this famous desert community is again sizzling — literally and figuratively — thanks to a revived and widespread fascination with ’50s modern architecture and all things retro. And gay men aren’t the only hipsters in town.
If my pen pal in Portland had bothered to pay attention during the past few years, he’d have known that when it comes to great mid-century modern architecture and design, Palm Springs is Mecca.
Fortunately, more than a few Portlanders do understand the allure of this desert oasis.
Two of the smart ones are Christy Eugenis and Stan Amy. Two years ago, the Portland power couple opened the ultra-chic Orbit In, a boutique hotel in the center of Palm Springs. They spent nearly two years renovating the 1957 motel in the city’s historic tennis club district, and last year added a second property to the Orbit In universe: the Hideaway, just down the street.
Like the original Orbit In property, now known as the Oasis, the Hideaway is in a meticulously restored ’50s motel property, originally designed by Herb W. Burns, a local designer, builder and innkeeper, who built quite a number of small inns and private homes with his own signature style and details.
With their low-pitched, almost flat, rooflines, deep overhangs and extensive glass, the buildings are prime examples of desert modern architecture of the ’50s.
Both Orbit In locations are smartly appointed with a collection of modern furniture worthy of a design museum. And they’ve become the place to stay in Palm Springs, a city that is to mid-century Modernism what Miami is to Art Deco.
The Oasis
Walk between the perforated-metal gates, through a tunnel of giant bird of paradise plants, and you feel like you’ve been transported into a mid-century fantasy world. Strains of Chet Baker’s “You Make Me Feel So Young” waft from speakers above the boomerang-shaped bar, which is topped with lava lamps. Poolside, a man in a Speedo sunbathes on a vintage Richard Schultz lounge chair.
Surrounding the pool are guest rooms with names such as Bossanovaville and the Leopard Lounge, cozy spaces filled with furniture designed decades ago by Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi. If the site of a 1959 Pierre Paulin Smile Chair Model 437 makes your pulse quicken, you’re in the right place; the hotel has two.
Eugenis, whose past lives include owning a design boutique called Nanu and stints as a fashion stylist, had always fantasized about opening a ’50s-style desert motel, though she originally had a typical Northwestern bias against Palm Springs: that it’s all “gated communities and plastic surgeries.”
On the advice of a friend who’d just invested in Palm Springs real estate, Eugenis visited in the late ’90s after what she describes as the “third icy, rainy winter in Portland.” While Rollerblading around town with a friend, she spotted a dilapidated motel property.
“We just kind of walked up to the gate and looked at it and it was like, ‘Oh, my God! I could just see it,” she recalls. “It was really well maintained, but dirty, and had this really icky carpet. But all they’d ever done was paint and re-carpet. They had not touched any of the original features — and that’s almost impossible to find.”
The idea for the Orbit In couldn’t have come at a better time.
Eugenis and husband Amy, a founder of New Seasons Markets, bought the first classic ’50s motel property in February of 1999, a week before a story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine described the “retro chic” appeal of Palm Springs. Many similar articles in other publications soon followed, and the desert has never been the same.
By the time the Orbit In opened in early 2001, boutique hotels were the hottest trend in vacationing and Palm Springs was just beginning to become trendy again.
Hollywood’s elite and other wealthy people began flocking here in the ’20s, and some great architects soon followed. Today, the place is still loaded with modernist gems designed by such greats as Albert Frey and Richard Neutra.
Architects came to build homes for the rich and stayed because they fell in love with the weather and the lunar-like mountains on which they could build hill-hugging residences that seemed to blend with the landscape. Over the years, they also built shopping centers, gas stations and banks, many of which still stand today because, at first, nobody could afford to replace them with something else, and then preservationists swooped in to save them.
Eugenis’ keen understanding of this heritage is what sets the Orbit In properties apart from other neo-modern motels in the Palm Springs area, most of which veer toward kitsch. Working with local architect Lance O’Donnell, she emphasized understated modern elegance, keeping the lines simple and the colors daring — muted orange and low-key chartreuse — but earthy. She scoured second-hand shops and estate sales in search of period furniture.
Giving a tour of the Oasis and the Hideaway, Eugenis, the consummate designer, is constantly tweaking: straightening a picture on the wall, trying a new seating arrangement, examining a chair. “What do you think?” she asks as she groups two Eames molded plywood chairs together around a coffee table, then answers her own question. “I think it works O.K.”
Updated elegance
The design team preserved such leftover features as the metal clocks recessed in walls and kitchenettes and bathrooms tiled in pink, light blue and mint green, while adding built-ins and other contemporary pieces.
At the Oasis, they moved the pool about four feet from its original location so they could construct a concrete wall topped with a planter containing Carolina cherry plants that provide privacy. They built a perforated metal shade structure over the pool bar area and added a gorgeous custom terrazzo boomerang bar inlaid with glass created by Seattle artist Kevin Spitzer. A concrete pavilion, also new, houses a small kitchen area and plumbing for the bar.
Seagrass floor coverings and Formica-topped custom built-ins in blonde woods create a neutral and soothing backdrop for furniture that doubles as works of art: a Bertoia Diamond chair, Eames fiberglass and molded plywood chairs and a Noguchi coffee table.
“At the time we started nobody had done a modern hotel in Palm Springs,” said Eugenis, a former fashion designer, photo stylist and fashion show producer. Since her early teens, style — whether in clothes, furniture or architecture — has been a passion. “I’ve always been able to pick trends. I knew that most of my friends liked to stay in small hotels, and I’ve always loved the ’50s thing because of the amoeba and geometric shapes and colors.”
In planning the Oasis, Eugenis stressed socializing and fun, making the central courtyard the gathering place for guests.
“The Oasis has an intimate courtyard environment. We designed and created a really colorful shade (for the area) and installed state-of-the-art misters, which allow us to keep temperatures 20 degrees cooler. The view is dramatic because you are right next to the mountains.”
And then, of course, there’s the bar. Eugenis clearly had fun planning the drink menu, though she was constrained by the lack of a liquor license. Instead of hard liquor, the staff uses sake to make a wide array of cocktails, everything from an Orbitini (a sake martini) to an Atomic Cosmo, a cosmopolitan with sake.
Guests sip cocktails and munch Japanese rice crackers served in ’50s Melmac dishes as strands of lounge music fill the air.
The Hideaway, though similar in style, provides a more secluded environment. Guests check themselves in and enjoy a bit more privacy and quiet, although they are invited to walk a few blocks down the street to the see-and-be-seen Oasis for happy hour around the boomerang bar.
Though similarly tricked out in ’50s decor inside and out, the Hideaway is relatively isolated from the Oasis action. A velvety green lawn and a large, remodeled pool complete the serene atmosphere. Couples and lone travelers in need of quiet can keep to themselves while taking in the mountain views.
When the original Orbit In opened in February 2000, word spread quickly and rooms filled up fast. Then came 9/11 and the accompanying drop in tourism. But by January 2002, “we were seeing more people from L.A., San Diego, San Francisco and Phoenix — some who had planned vacations to Mexico or abroad and then changed their plans to our destination — within driving distance or a short flight,” said Eugenis.
“Since then, Palm Springs seems to have become increasingly popular, and we’re seeing an increase in guests from New York, Chicago, Europe and Japan,” he said.
Eugenis would like to see both properties attract more groups for business and healing retreats. Once a year, she hosts a “girlfriends getaway weekend” for her extended group of friends from Portland and elsewhere, and she hopes to entice others to do the same. The weekend includes lounging by the pool, cocktail parties, shopping sprees and mountain hikes.
Linda Nygaard, a Portland writer who attended the first girlfriends getaway in 2001, described it as equal parts gabfest, recreation and “total relaxation.”
Among her strongest memories: “nearly fainting from the heat” while riding one of the Orbit In’s vintage-style bikes around town. But the challenging bike ride added to her appreciation for the hotel’s patio misters.
“It was a sheer pleasure to lay by the pool under a lifesaving mist,” she says.
The rest of the weekend was spent making lifelong friends.
“We (danced) around the pool, read tarot cards well into the night, talked about life, politics, men, life in our 40s and 50s, art, history and culture. Many of these conversations happened while floating around the pool on a mattress or while sitting in the hot tub looking up at that expansive sky. It was a learning weekend of many kinds, she said, as well as being “an education in ‘hip.’ “