Walter S. White was a multi-faceted man. He grew up in San Bernardino and was the son of a builder and contractor. For most of his career, White was a prolific builder and contractor himself. He erected by his count “300 residences, 40 recreation homes, ski lodges, commercial buildings, churches, luxurious club houses and guest rooms, and condominiums. Of the residences designed, I have built approximately 15% of them myself.”
Yet, he was much more than a designer/builder. He reportedly took his first steps in architecture as a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, followed by stints with well-known Southern California-based architects such as Rudolph Schindler, Win E. Wilson, and Kelly Rouf. White also worked with famed modernist architect Harwell Hamilton Harris.
After World War II ended, White came to Palm Springs to work for Clark & Frey Architects before moving on to Colorado Springs, Colorado. There, he established his own practice and eventually obtained his architecture license in 1967. Throughout his career, he worked on commissions between Colorado and California.
That would have been a noteworthy career for any architect, but the accomplished White had myriad other interests. For instance, during the war, he worked with Wilson to design and build prefabricated houses made of skin-stressed plywood. These pre-fabs were largely intended for workers in war industries who needed affordable housing. After the war, White continued to put tremendous effort into creating affordable housing. He used materials like concrete blocks to create starter homes for thousands of returning servicemen and their families. He was equally obsessed with energy efficiency; his product called the Solar Heat Exchanger Window Wall –patented in 1975 – was the result of years of research and development.
However, all of that pales in comparison with what many consider White’s greatest gift to modern American architecture: roofs. He certainly had a singular vision for what sits on top of a structure. He received a second patent in 1996 for his unique, unprecedented roof design, called the Hyperbolic Paraboloid Roof Structure.
To understand White’s vision for this roof design, it’s probably best to start with his war-time service. For over four years during the United States’s participation in World War II, he worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company in El Segundo. Though he officially worked as a machine tool designer, it’s not difficult to imagine the young architect intently studying the company’s designs for its C-47 Skytrain, A-20 Havoc, or SBD Dauntless dive bomber.
White continued to work for Douglas through 1946. Surely, he witnessed the company’s construction of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet – a high-altitude, turbojet-powered strategic bomber with sleek fuselage and sweeping wings that ushered in a new era of aviation design. The emerging space-age designs must have been revelatory to the young architect.
Courtesy Wedding Wire
Walter White House
Interestingly, White next went to work with John Porter Clark and Albert Frey in 1947. The talented duo embarked on several significant projects in the 1950s and ’60s, such as Palm Springs City Hall, the Valley Station for the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, and the San Jacinto Hotel. The impact on White must’ve been significant. Though he was based in Colorado Springs from 1948 onward, he continued to work regularly in the Coachella Valley – particularly in Palm Desert, where he designed over 50 homes.
Several of the homes that White designed during the ’50s are notable for their unique roof structures. The Dr. Franz Alexander Residence (a.k.a. the Alexander House) was built in 1956 for the psychoanalyst and his wife, artist Anita Venier Alexander, according to the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation website. The two-story structure, built on a rocky hillside in the neighborhood now know as Little Tuscany, was designed to maximize the extraordinary view across the Valley. It achieved a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 because “… the curling gesture of its roof, peeling away from the building’s boxy envelope, and the unusual steel framework that supports the roof and over structure, are the dwelling’s primary and highly visible character-defining features.”
The Alexander commission possibly led to the creation of the Miles C. Bates House (a.k.a. the Wave House) in Palm Desert a short time later. The home is notable for its distinctive, curving roof. The success of these dwellings certainly was a selling point when White was approached by the Reverend Max E. Willcockson, minister of education for the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Willcockson had acquired an interesting piece of land in Indio – a large hillock and leveled-off mound with 360-degree views of the largely flat surrounding area. Few other houses were located in the immediate area, which featured groves of fig trees.
White, with his keen eye for environment, possibly saw the opportunity to create a structure that seemed to soar above the surrounding landscape. He began with the roof, of course, and no doubt drew heavily on his years at the Douglas Aircraft Company. He dubbed the project a hyperbolic paraboloid. (In math, a hyperbola consists of two components that are mirrors of each other and resemble infinite bows, and a paraboloid is a quadric surface that possess a single axis of symmetry but has no center of symmetry. So, in simpler terms, it was a roof that pointed both skyward and earthward.)
“He (White) built the roof first,” according to a manager at Walker Land Co., which owns the Desert White House and completed a massive restoration of the neglected, deteriorating property less than two years ago. The manager points to a black and white photo in the home’s living room – taken from a distance – that shows the roof being held aloft by steel supports. “The house was then built underneath the completed roof,” he says.
As the Alexander House proved, White was also a master of siting. As one stands in the living room of the Desert White House, the upward sweep of the roof and the windows beneath it provide a dramatic view of the mountains across the flat plain beneath the house. The view brings to mind a feeling of movement, as if the living room is about to take off and soar above the Valley.
Courtesy Wedding Wire
White House Interior
The layout of the house and its rooms is unconventional. The present owners meticulously restored the home as closely as possible to White’s original vision. The property manager notes that a wall between the large kitchen and dining/living room area was taken down. It was a wise decision. Now, all three rooms are fully exposed to the mountain and the sky. Other rooms seem more eccentric. A wall across from the door in one guest room abruptly curves downward, which makes it the room feel like a ground-floor attic room. Unless you’re the kind of person who needs a dresser or a TV screen across from the bed, it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s kind of fun and whimsical.
Other unique features are present, as well, including clerestory windows. They exist not only to open rooms to the sky but also to simply fill in spaces created by the unorthodox curve of the roof. Similar to the Alexander House, the angled steel supporting struts are visible throughout the home; White made no attempt to mask them with unnecessary interior walls.
Finally, it’s impossible not to compare the supersonic roof of the Desert White House to Frey’s roof for the former Tramway Gas Station (now known as the Palm Springs Visitors Center). Frey designed the Enco gas station in 1965 – six years after White completed his Indio masterpiece. Was that an instance of imitation being the highest form of flattery, or did Frey acknowledge that his former associate had grown his own wings and taken flight?
