page_title: Palm Springs, California
section_title: Post-World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Palm Springs, California / History / 20th century / Post-World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: A spectacular aerial photo of Palm Springs with airport in foreground. Majestic Mt. San Jacinto rising up some 10,831 feet in the background.
context_page_description: Palm Springs is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately 94 square miles, making it the largest city in Riverside County by land area. With multiple plots in checkerboard pattern, more than 10% of the city is part of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians reservation land. Traditionally the Cahuilla refer to the Palm Springs area as Pal Séxey, or Séx'i.
  Although the population of Palm Springs was 44,552 as of the 2010 census, because Palm Springs is a retirement location, as well as a winter snowbird destination, the city's population triples between November and March.
  The city is noted for its mid-century modern architecture, design elements, arts and cultural scene, and recreational activities.
context_section_description: Architectural modernists flourished with commissions from the stars, using the city to explore architectural innovations, new artistic venues, and an exotic back-to-the-land experiences. Inventive architects designed unique vacation houses, such as steel houses with prefabricated panels and folding roofs, a glass-and-steel house in a boulder-strewn landscape, and a carousel house that turned to avoid the sun's glare.
  In 1946, Richard Neutra designed the Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann House. A modernist classic, this mostly glass residence incorporated the latest technological advances in building materials, using natural lighting and floating planes and flowing space for proportion and detail. In recent years an energetic preservation program has protected and enhanced many classic buildings.
  Culver (2010) argues that Palm Springs architecture became the model for mass-produced suburban housing, especially in the Southwest. This "Desert Modern" style was a high-end architectural style featuring open-design plans, wall-to-wall carpeting, air-conditioning, swimming pools, and very large windows. As Culver concludes, "While environmentalists might condemn desert modern, the masses would not. Here, it seemed, were houses that fully merged inside and outside, providing spaces for that essential component of Californian—and indeed middle-class American—life: leisure. While not everyone could have a Neutra masterpiece, many families could adopt aspects of Palm Springs modern."
  Hollywood values permeated the resort as it combined celebrity, health, new wealth, and sex. As Culver (2010) explains: "The bohemian sexual and marital mores already apparent in Hollywood intersected with the resort atmosphere of Palm Springs, and this new, more open sexuality would gradually appear elsewhere in national tourist culture." During this period, the city government, stimulated by real estate developers systematically removed and excluded poor people and Indians.
  Palm Springs was pictured by the French photographer Robert Doisneau in November 1960 as part of an assignment for Fortune on the construction of golf courses in this particularly dry and hot area of the Colorado desert. Doisneau submitted around 300 slides following his ten-day stay depicting the lifestyle of wealthy retirees and Hollywood stars in the 1960s. At the time, Palm Springs counted just 19 courses, which had grown to 125 by 2010.
caption: A 1960s postcard of Palm Springs with Mt. San Jacinto in the background.
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