Robson Chambers house, 1947
Dear ——–,
Bryan signed us up for the Palm Spring Modern Heritage Fund‘s Modern Homes Tour on Saturday, with the caveat that we could take a time-out at any time if the baby was fussing/crying/peeing/pooping. With the baby tucked into a Baby Bjorn, we managed to see all the houses except for the first and the last on the tour, including this house designed by Robson Chambers as his own home. (For those of you who want to own a piece of architecture history, it is for sale — $575,000.) Most of the homes on the tour were vintage, including a house Arthur Elrod designed for himself that seemed frozen in the early 1960s, with a quaint orange-green color scheme in the living room, an enormous King-Arthur-esque round dining table, and a Steinway designed by the architect. The houses we liked best — a Dean Davidson house from 1965 and a Stan Sackley house from 1971 — mixed the indoor-outdoor space, with floor-to-ceiling windows, access to the pool from most rooms and terrazzo floors that allowed for wet feet from the pool. As the setting sun glowed golden-pink on the San Jacinto Mountains, we mused at how fun it was to see private houses in neighborhoods we never would’ve explored as tourists. You could almost hear the clink of cocktail glasses behind us.
