Palm Springs Holiday: A Vintage Tour from Palm Springs to the Saltan Sea

by Peter Moruzzi

Overview

This is the story of Palm Springs in its golden years, a city that had it all, including marvelous midcentury Modern architecture, fabulous fly-in hotels, and a swinging nightlife.

Through vintage photographs, postcards, and other ephemera, Palm Springs Holiday recalls the Palm Springs area from the 1910s through the 1960s, where people vacationed in the desert, dined, danced, and lounged poolside. Features vintage images of the Coachella Valley and shots of the area’s famous hotels and gambling dens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423604761
Publisher:	Gibbs Smith
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	8.32(w) x 10.24(h) x 0.85(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Peter Moruzzi is the author of Havana Before Castro: When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground. An architectural historian by profession, he is an acknowledged expert on midcentury Modern architecture and design. He is the founding president of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, an organization dedicated to preserving modern architecture and historic neighborhoods in the Coachella Valley. He lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

Read an Excerpt

This is the story of the Coachella Valley--home of Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, La Quinta, Indio, and other desert cities--as experienced by the average tourist who vacationed here from the 1910s through the 1960s. It is the story of a Palm Springs holiday that you or I might have once taken to "America''s Foremost Desert Resort."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 7
Introduction 8
Early History 11
The Original Hotels 17
Arrival of the Spanish Style 33
The Desert''s Gambling Dens 39
The Postwar Tourist Boom 45
Shopping! 65
The Palm Springs Hotel Explosion 75
Desert Dining 95
The Chi Chi and The Doll House 101
Desert Modern 109
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway 121
Going Down Valley 127

Editorial Reviews

Sheltered by mountains on every side, the Coachella Valley desert city of Palm Springs seems in some ways an improbable locale for a thriving vacation retreat, but this seemingly remote California outpost became just that in the post–World War II boom. Peter Moruzzi's authoritative Palm Springs Holiday pictorial demonstrates that this winter haven provided much more than off-season sunburns; it also spawned significant post-Bauhaus "Desert Modern" architecture by masters by Albert Frey, Richard Neutra, and others. With its 500 color and black-and-white photographs, this coffee table book qualifies as a portable wonder.