Desert Magazine
Kurt Cyr stands in front of the Kaufmann desert house.
These days, the term “Renaissance person” has been a bit watered down; it sometimes celebrates the fact that someone can hold down a job, make pesto, and change the oil in their car.
In the case of Palm Springs resident Kurt Cyr, “Renaissance man” is almost inadequate.
Cyr has worked as a designer in LA for 26 years. He and his husband, Jay Zaltzman, moved to the desert in 2010. (Cyr designed their Lawrence Crossley neighborhood home.) He co-founded Salon for the Parched (a lecture/social event) and was one of the founders of the late, lamented art community of Makerville. Cyr scouts the high desert for botanicals to make extraordinary gin. He dresses with panache and is an active member of several local preservation groups. He possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of modernist architecture and design, so he was tapped to lead the double-decker bus tours during Modernism Week. His tours were so popular that he went to the Public Utility Commission to obtain his tour guide license and launched Mod Squad Tours in 2015.
Desert Magazine asked for a tour of Cyr’s favorite houses. He regaled us with a lecture on modern desert architecture for 90 minutes, sprinkled liberally with fascinating anecdotes about the area’s current or one-time celebrity owners. We met at the Saguaro Hotel; Cyr guided his minivan across Sunrise and into a neighborhood thick with tightly packed mid-century homes. “This neighborhood that we're in right now is called Deepwell Estates,” Cyr says, as he slows down to show us a low slung, flat-roofed brick, wood, and glass home. It exuded cool. “This house here on the left … was designed by Stan Sackley in 1965, but its claim to fame happened in 1966 in the April edition of Playboy Magazine. It was featured as the Playboy Bachelor Pad House of the Year. So, Playboy Magazine was actually a big promoter of modern architecture.”
Not far away, we stopped at an intriguing all-white home. “This house is really quite beautiful. It was built in 1955 by G.F. Barrett, who was the attorney general for the state of Illinois between '41 and '49. This is a class-one site. It sits on an acre. So, this is two lots here, and then the backyard has two lots; [it] goes from street to street. The Barretts owned it for 11 years. In 1966, it was sold to the actor William Holden, so it's known as the William Holden home. He and Stefanie Powers had it for about 11 years. Then, in 1992, it was purchased by steel magnate, Luis Barrenechea, Tippi Hedren’s husband from 1985 to 1995. So, we have two celebrities that were associated with this house.”
After a thorough perusal of Deepwell, Cyr turned south across Highway 111 into an area that got the international spotlight this last year when it was featured in the film Don’t Worry Darling. “This neighborhood that we're heading into is called Twin Palms; it has become a really important neighborhood. This development was built by the Alexander Construction Company between 1958 and 1959; there were 90 houses that were built here. Bill Krisel was the architect, and the magic about this neighborhood is that it looks like a custom neighborhood but all these houses are exactly the same. They're three bedrooms, two baths. This was really the genius of Krisel and the Alexanders … They built modern homes, but they made them look like they were custom homes. The most cost-effective way to build a house is in a square or a rectangle. The least number of exterior corners you have, the cheaper it is to build. So, Bill Krisel came up with this idea of a 40-foot square, which gives you that sweet spot of 1600 square feet.”
Cyr drove us deeper into South Palm Springs to a neighborhood of wide streets, duplexes, and condominium complexes. “I think there (were) seven phases of developments here. This is a condominium complex. It's called Canyon View Estates. You could see it has almost an 'Edward Scissorhands' surreal quality to it, like these wide streets and then the green grass. Then, you can see our elements of the clerestory windows in the brise soleil and the shadow block walls. In order to add interest to the architecture, there's a lot of texture added. So, over the course of the day, you get a lot of interesting, dynamic shadow play.”
Our next surprise came further east when Cyr showed us an incongruous Roman-style temple/fountain in the middle of a ‘60s development. “This is Villa Roma. That's from 1964. That's really taking the kind of neoclassical Roman revival design even further. In 1960, the summer Olympic Games were held in Rome, and it was the first time the Olympics had ever been internationally broadcast. So, the world saw Rome. They saw the Pantheon, the Colosseum , the Baths of Caracalla, and people decided to [say], ‘Hey, I want to live like Caesar.’ So, we start seeing this Roman revival architectural style really begin to take root here in Palm Springs in the early 1960s.”
We wound our way north again to where Highway 111 swings east. Cyr cruised around the back of the Caliente Tropics Resort to show us where Polynesian and mid-century design intersected. “Now, this is a really fun complex here. This is called Royal Hawaiian Estates, and much like the Roman revival architecture, there was a period of tiki [style], which was very fashionable. This is 1961/62. This is Wexler and Harrison. These are condos. The whole tiki phenomenon started to take root right after World War II. That's when Hawaii became the 50th state, in 1959. It was probably the most exotic place on the planet that you could go [to], and you didn't have to exchange money or learn a new language. It was part of the States. They had the whole kind of fantasy of Bali Hai from the musical (South Pacific) … and Palm Springs, again, being a resort, people were more willing to try this kind of fantasy architecture here.”
We drove up Indian Canyon and then swung up North Palm Canyon to Vista Chino, where we stopped to gape at Richard Neutra’s beautifully restored Kaufmann desert house. Considering the high hedges that protect the privacy of most homes in Little Tuscany and Old Las Palmas, it’s amazing to stand outside the Kaufmann’s gate and get a good look at this architectural gem. As we cruised south into Vista Las Palmas, Cyr paused outside a fairly unremarkable mid-century house fronted by a gaudy pink mailbox. “This is, supposedly, Marilyn Monroe's house. And the guys who redid it, they left a little memento of what it used to look like with the mailbox. Well, it's rumored. Maybe she slept here or she rented it. There's no proof. There's no paperwork that she ever owned a house. But celebrities, they rented, and they popped from house to house to house to house.”
Our tour with Cyr came to a close at the piece de la résistance of the tour: the Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway. “It was actually Robert and Helene Alexander's home. The Alexanders were the ones who really brought modern architecture to the masses here. And this is 1960. It's a Bill Krisel design. When it was recently redone, they did a pretty good job.”
The house, also known as the House of Tomorrow, recently sold last October for a reported $5.65 million.
When we arrive back at the Saguaro, we all want to immediately sign up for another tour. The 90-minute tour had gone by quickly and we knew we’d only scratched the surface.
