Palm Springs Paradise: Vintage Photographs from America's Desert Playground

by Peter Moruzzi

Overview

This book collects more than two hundred fascinating and rarely seen historical photographs of Palm Springs, newly digitized from the Palm Springs Historical Society's expansive archive. Featured are many Hollywood celebrities, including Sinatra and the Rat Pack, who vacationed there, the early days of the desert paradise, various architectural masterworks, such as the fabulous El Mirador Hotel and the extraordinary, outrageous, and irreverent people of Palm Springs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423639923
Publisher:	Smith, Gibbs Publisher
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	62 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Peter Moruzzi graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and later attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In 1999, he founded the Palm Springs Modern Committee (PS ModCom), an architectural preservation group. He is the author of Palm Springs Holiday, Palm Springs Paradise, and Havana Before Castro.

Read an Excerpt

Early Palm Springs

Palm Springs is the ancestral home of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who lived in the Coachella Valley for centuries before white people began colonizing the area to grow crops in the late nineteenth century. Floods and drought quashed that experiment.

The area was next promoted as a tubercular sanatorium, but that was not to be Palm Springs’ destiny. Through toil and grit, the early pioneers—mostly sturdy women—forged a Shangri-la out of a failed agricultural colony and middling hospice. The transformation of Palm Springs into a winter playground was astonishingly rapid. By 1925, automobiles from Los Angeles—and the transcontinental railroad from the Midwest and East—filled the village with tourists. Palm Springs also attracted its share of artists, photographers, and sun-baked eccentrics, who chose the desert for inspiration.

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Early Palm Springs 8

The Thirties and Forties 24

The Fabulous El Mirador 34

Architectural Masterworks 48

Unique Architecture 72

Having Fun! 96

Palm Springs Crazy! 128

Celebrities 152

The Rat Pack 166

Acknowledgments 176