As dawn broke on the morning of Aug. 23, 1941, the charismatic Englishman Edwin John Dingle gathered a small group of spiritual followers to consecrate his “New City of Mentalphysics.” With unobstructed views of the high desert and the Little San Bernardino Mountains to the south, the 152 acres Dingle acquired in Yucca Valley was intended to become an extension of his Los Angeles church and a New Age “City of the Future.” His vision was brought to life, in large part, by the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. The Retreat Center boasts the largest collection of Lloyd Wright buildings in the world.

Southern California was fertile ground for new metaphysical thought in the early 20th century. People in southern California were untethered from the conservative culture of the middle states and East Coast. They found a freedom of thought that nurtured new religious forms that borrowed from both Eastern and Western traditions. California had more utopian colonies between 1850 and 1950 than any other state in the Union. Dingle’s Mentalphysics was right in line with the esoteric religious thought of his day.

Dingle was known as “Ding Le Mei” to practitioners of his system of Mentalphysics. He was a trailblazing journalist, publisher, and spiritual practitioner. He spent more than 20 years in Asia and trekked across China to Tibet in the 1910s. Dingle recounts in his book My Life in Tibet that he learned the secrets of ancient Eastern wisdom during his travels. He then spent a lifetime sharing this knowledge with others. “Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God” is one of his many memorable sayings.

For his New City in the high desert, Dingle envisioned housing, farms, orchards, horse stables, livestock pens, a grade school, an auto repair shop, a theater, a fire station, and an orphanage, as well as designated spaces for the practice of yoga and meditation and classes on Mentalphysics. 

Due to his prodigious talent for marketing, Dingle had raised enough funds by the mid-1940s to start building the large common buildings he envisioned. He originally approached the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build his New City. The elder Wright seemed to have little interest in working on the project, or perhaps reacted to Dingle’s strong personality, and quickly handed off the project to his son, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (also known as “Lloyd Wright”) early in the process.

Lloyd Wright worked on the project for over a decade, from 1946 to 1957. “Moved by the sense of the tranquil nobility of the desert, I have planned not a city of asphalt paving and congested living barracks, but a city of the desert – spacious, free, sweeping,” he later said about the project. “…Its centuries-old Joshua trees standing like sentinels about its homes.” 

Lloyd Wright (1890-1978) studied engineering and horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He then settled in San Diego, eager to establish his professional independence from his famous father. He worked for another pioneering modern architect, Irving Gill, and contributed to San Diego’s 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in Balboa Park. Lloyd Wright soon moved to Los Angeles to establish his own architectural practice. He designed a series of innovative houses (several for silent movie stars), some with prominent commissions, such as the striking Mayan-themed Sowden House and the original Hollywood Bowl bandshell. 

Lloyd Wright was in tune with Angelenos’ enthusiastic embrace of the car culture; he designed an innovative drive-in market. His relationship with his father remained contentious, but he collaborated with him and invented the unique concrete block system that the elder Wright used for the now-famous Millard, Ennis, Freeman, and Storer houses. Lloyd Wright also worked alongside architect Rudolph Shindler on his father’s iconic Hollyhock House in Los Angeles.

“I’ve stopped describing him as ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s son’ and have started describing Lloyd Wright as one of the most far-sighted modern architects in California,” architectural historian Alan Hess says.

Lloyd Wright stepped into work on Dingle’s New City in 1946 and soon discovered it had experienced major setbacks from the beginning. The inception of the project corresponded with the start of World War II and construction lagged with the start of the war effort. Despite this, the impressive Caravansary of Joy building was completed by the end of 1946. 

This building displays many of the same elements that Lloyd Wright’s father utilized at Taliesin West in Arizona. Large, exaggerated desert masonry buttresses, with rocks extracted from the site, extend beyond the edges of the walls; covered walkways connect the meeting and lodging spaces. Work continued throughout the 1950s, and Lloyd Wright completed the Retreat Center’s cafeteria building, outdoor amphitheater, and eight duplex/triplex cottages by 1956.  

Hess, author of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Buildings, notes that “(Lloyd Wright’s) connections to the desert are strong – his Oasis Hotel from 1923 already established the major themes of the later mid-century Palm Springs architects – technology, nature, [and] recreational architecture.”

The buildings realized at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center reflect the maturation of major themes that Lloyd Wright thoughtfully employed throughout his career.

Despite constant fundraising by Dingle, a review of letters between Lloyd Wright and his father, Frank Lloyd Wright, during this time reveal a continuing challenge to raise funds for the project. Lloyd Wright left the project when funding streams eventually slowed to a trickle. Southern California architect O.K. Earl took over the project and built four additional structures on the campus, which were completed by 1961.

The Retreat Center served primarily as a teaching and retreat center for Mentalphysics members for the first 75 years. In recent years, the center also expanded its programming to embrace compatible spiritual pursuits and retreats. 

“Dingle’s synthesis of East and West into a single, not strictly Christian, quasi-religious teaching discipline falls in line with a larger southern California context that was home to a multitude of such endeavors during the early 20th century,” Daniel Paul, an architectural historian, says. 

Dingle helped pioneer the understanding of Eastern teachings that are central to the larger southern California New Age landscape. He died in 1981, and his Los Angeles Times obituary described the Institute of Mentalphysics as “one of southern California’s most enduring religious sects.” 

Modernism Week tours of the Institute of Mentalphysics’ Joshua Tree Retreat Center will take place on February 19 and 20. The “Edwin + Lloyd” exhibit will be open to the public from Feb. 19 through March 8. Architectural Historian Daniel Paul’s lecture will occur on March 5. For more information, visit www.modernismweek.com and www.jtrcc.org.