In the early 1990s, Palm Springs felt like a faded resort town barely hanging on. Sure, the desert setting was spectacular and Los Angeles was only a few hours away—but the mid-century celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Liberace had long since vanished, and even Sonny Bono was struggling to breathe life back into a frayed-at-the-edges downtown.
Still, to me, Palm Springs was a wonderland. A trip down Palm Canyon Drive felt like coasting through a mid-century dreamscape: the swooping cantilevered roof of Albert Frey's Tramway Gas Station; the old Robinson's Department Store with its folded "W" roofline; the jewel box Ocotillo Lodge by William Cody; and a Bank of America shaped like a miniature of Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp. Everywhere, glass walls gleamed and butterfly roofs lifted toward the mountains.
And then the world caught on. Modernism Week was born, and now more than 130,000 design aficionados arrive each year to celebrate those very glass walls and soaring rooflines. They tour restored gems like Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House and Leonardo DiCaprio's Dinah Shore Estate, and listen to learned talks on Bauhaus influence and swimming-pool geometry.
For me, though, sipping coffee under a shaded cantilevered canopy or watching a desert sunset through a scrim of airy breeze blocks, I find myself enticed into a retro-modern future that never was but somehow is. I feel ten years old again, wandering through the 1964 World's Fair in a haze of turquoise, coral, and Mondrian yellow—and the world is an optimistic, ordered and beautiful place.
