Inspiration

I've occasionally mentioned cool modern (or vintage modern) homes on here, but for a couple of days last week I got to see in person some of the most iconic 20th century architecture produced in the U.S...

The better-half and I, accompanied by our good friends, escaped to Palm Springs for a four-day respite from the cold, wet and gray. While it's a guilty pleasure for those of us who espouse density and environmentalism, I have to say that PS was full of low-effort fun (and what guilty pleasure isn't?), plenty of sun, and good food... and scores of architectural landmarks from the 1940s into the 1970s. As much as I had read about these buildings over the years, I wasn't prepared for how right they would feel to me, someone who grew up in cookie-cutter, ersatz colonial-themed subdivisions.


Make no mistake, many if not most of the houses I saw were intended for mass production even if, as in the case of the Wexler steel houses, only seven were built.





The Alexander Company had a huge impact on Palm Springs, and of course as someone who rails against sameness I have to admit my weakness for this particular brand of conformity flies in the face of my usual arguments (see above about guilty pleasures and PS.) On the other hand, most of these houses are modest in scale (for single-family residences), and exhibit an efficient use of space and light that lend the feeling of much bigger houses... lessons current developers would be wise to heed.

But hey, I don't need to justify my infatuation THAT much, do I? After all we're talking about the place where Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon... where Frank Sinatra's house is still front and center... and while the 70s and 80s celebs have yet to show up their ancestors in the style department, it's still fun to running across Suzanne Somers' house advertised for sale in a local real estate pulp mag ;)

All of this has inspired me to renew my search for the best examples of contemporary residential architecture for sale in Seattle... stay tuned... I think it's time for a fun group tour of some local mod(ern) homes for sale, don't you? Email me direct at mattgray@cbbain.com if you'd like to tag along... I'll have details in the next day or two.