A Palmer & Krisel house in Sunrise Park, built by the George Alexander Construction Company and sold new from $19,900. Its history, and a first look at what we’re doing with it.
See the houseIn 1958 builders in Palm Springs were selling a new kind of house: open plans, low rooflines, a living room that opens to the garden through a wall of glass.
Orchid Tree is one of those houses, built by the George Alexander Construction Company in its Enchanted Homes tract, on William Krisel’s Ramon Rise plan. It is a modest house, one of well over a thousand the Alexanders built in Palm Springs.
The work ahead starts from what is original: the plan, post and beams, the roofline, the stacked stone.
George Alexander and his son Robert built well over a thousand modern houses in Palm Springs between 1957 and 1965, on the conviction that an architect-designed home could fit a modest budget. Their advertisements said it in three lines: designed by architects, built by master builders, for permanent value.
Born in Shanghai in 1924, Krisel ran Palmer & Krisel with his partner Dan Saxon Palmer, the firm behind the Alexanders’ best-known tracts. His papers and drawings, the plan for this house among them, are kept at the Getty Research Institute.
Krisel drew it in January 1957: three bedrooms, two baths, about 1,200 square feet. It was his second pass. The version that got built sets the kitchen beside the bathrooms, an economy that kept the plumbing runs short, and opens the living room to the garden through a wall of glass.
“I don’t call my architecture a style. It’s my language. And I speak midcentury modern.”
Sunmor, Little Beverly Hills and Sunrise Park were built by the same company, to designs by the same architects, on one floor plan. Their houses are part of the midcentury style Palm Springs is known for. They are numbered here in the order the neighborhoods broke ground.
East of Farrell Drive. Builder Bob Higgins broke ground on Sunmor Estates in 1955 with houses by Wexler & Harrison. The venture stalled, and around 1957 the Alexanders took up the unbuilt land. From January 1958 they sold the Ramon Rise plan here as Enchanted Homes. Some classifieds call it Enchanted Estates.
South of Ramon Road, west of El Cielo. SonGold Land Development broke ground on Ramon Rise Estates in October 1956 and built the first twenty or so houses. The Alexanders bought the remaining 64 lots and built them out as Enchanted Village between July 1957 and February 1958. The design had its start in Sunmor, dual gable included. Krisel set it down here as the Ramon Rise plan, and it then carried over to Sunrise Park.
West of Farrell Drive. In May 1958 the Desert Sun announced “a new group of houses which will extend east from Sunset Way” to join the houses already standing across Farrell. The Enchanted Homes here are concentrated on three consecutive blocks. The rest of Sunrise Park has its own history, including Jack Meiselman’s Palm Lane Estates and the work of other builders.
That was the promise in a March 1958 Enchanted Homes advertisement. Beside it: a national design-merit certificate naming George Alexander Co. and Palmer & Krisel.
The ad promised design that would last, in a house for everyday living. Nearly seven decades later, we are taking the ad at its word.
Take a closer look at the originalDesert Sun · March 7, 1958
Archive scan via Palm Springs Preservation Foundation
FURNISHED MODEL HOME
Now Open for Inspection
2866 LIVMORE AVENUE
Refrigerated cooling, forced air heating, built-in range and oven, dishwasher, disposal, fireplace. Completely fenced.
3 BEDROOMS — 2 BATHSPRICES START AT $19,900MINIMUM DOWN PAYMENT $1,950
Paddock pool an optional feature
Close to schools. 3 minutes to downtown.
“ENCHANTED HOMES has a new group of houses which will extend east from Sunset Way to join the present community of Enchanted Homes east and west of Louella Road. Muriel Bering Interiors has designed the decor in the model house now open at 212 Sunset Way. This development is another stage in the multi-million dollar program of high quality homes now being carried out by the Alexander Construction Company.”
DESERT SUN · MAY 23, 1958 · CAPTION TO A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MODEL HOME’S LIVING ROOMOrchid Tree goes up in Enchanted Homes 3, the George Alexander Construction Company’s Sunrise Park development, on Krisel’s Ramon Rise plan.
The city’s historic resources survey identifies the Enchanted Homes, this house among them, as contributors to a potential Sunmor / Enchanted Homes historic district, and to the midcentury character and legacy of Palm Springs.
One block away, a 1958 Alexander house was set for demolition. Neighbors from both sides of Farrell Drive turned out, the preservation board voted unanimously for a stay, and the house was saved and restored.
“…something that should be saved.”William Krisel, on midcentury Palm Springs
Restoration would return the house to 1958 and keep it there. Renovation would treat 1958 as something to get past.
We’re after the ground between the two. Work with the Ramon Rise plan and keep what makes it a Krisel house: post and beams, the long line of the roof, the stacked stone at the front, the western exposure and clerestory glass that open the living room to the San Jacinto Mountains. Then modernize the home systems, and make each new thing as its builders might have with today’s materials.
Krisel called his work a language. We want the house to keep speaking it.
