Everything you need to know about
Mid Century Palm Springs Alexanders....
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Features Listing
Palm Springs living – Midcentury Style - About the Much Celebrated Alexander Homes
The Palm Springs Modernism Movement began with custom-homes and hotel designs by the likes of Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Albert Frey.
It was not until 1956, thirty-four years after Schindler’s first modern home was built in Palm Springs that the Alexander Construction Company broke onto the Palm Springs scene and built the Ocotillo Lodge Hotel.
Before the Alexander home tracts were built throughout Palm Springs, The Ocotillo Lodge,
now a condo-style hotel in the mid-century modern genre, located in South Palm Springs
in the Twin Palms neighborhood, was the first collaboration between Alexander and
architects Dan Palmer and William Krisel in 1956, a pairing that over the next few years
would redefine the architectural and demographic landscape of Palm Springs residential real estate.
Throughout the 1950’s and early 1960’s, George Alexander’s building company was a powerhouse in the Southern California post-war housing boom – and especially in Palm Springs, Ca. More than 2,000 Alexander homes were built in Palm Springs during this approximately ten year span.
The Alexander Construction Company:
Palm Springs Midcentury Homes – Meet the Alexander Home
At first, Alexander homes were designed for sheer production efficiency, but in 1957, Krisel and Palmer came to Palm Springs in conjunction with the Alexander Construction Company with a new concept:
to build stylish modern-style tract homes with clean lines and simple elegance that were affordable and even more efficiently producible.
In the late 1950s, the mass production of mid-century modern Alexander style of tract homes was an untested and somewhat revolutionary idea from relatively unknown architects.
George Alexander agreed with architect Bill Krisel to a trial run of building ten homes, with more to follow if the experiment was a success.
Today, the Alexander is widely coveted by young and old alike, and Bill Krisel, living in the Los Angeles area and in his eighties, has become a folk hero of mid-century modern home enthusiasts. William Krisel's complete archive is now at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and available to all.
Midcentury Modern is Big in Palm Springs – 1,200 Alexander Homes
In 1957, full-scale production of single-family Alexander homes (most with private pools) began in Palm Springs in the neighborhood of Twin Palms Estates, directly south of highway 111 and south of the Ocotillo Lodge, after the first mid-century modern tract homes were met with great enthusiasm. In all, Alexander would build some 2,500 of the Krisel/Palmer-designed homes, setting the tone for a modern-to-the-masses building movement.
Alexander homes were among the first homes in Palm Springs to come with large and deep standard in-ground swimming pools, many with diving boards, a feature that made Palm Springs more enjoyable in the season and much more welcoming in the summer.
Many of the new Alexanders even came with some landscaping - with two palm trees, for example - which is how the Twin Palms Neighborhood of Palm Springs gets its name.
Starting at a cost of about $30,000 dollars when initially built in 1957, Alexander homes made Palm Springs affordable for the every-day vacation homeowner population.
Today Alexanders are available for sale in the $275,000 (fixer), to $500,000 and the largest most nicely restored and updated sell into the $950,000 to $1.2 million range.
Alexanders for sale? Contact Neil Curry, Palm Springs Alexander Specialist, (760) 285.2349 or click here to email Neil.
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Palm Springs Alexander Neighborhoods
About 1200 Palm Springs Alexanders were built between the years of 1957 through 1966 in Palm Springs, Ca by the Alexander Construction Company. There are 11 neighborhoods total; below are the most popular neighborhoods where Alexander homes, ranging in price from $275,000 to $1,200,000,
are available for you to buy.
For more info on buying a Palm Springs Alexander, email Neil Curry, Realtor or call Neil directly at (760) 285.2349.
VISTA LAS PALMAS
330 HOMES
BUILT: 1957 - 1963
Approx sq.ft. 2100 - 2200
This mid-century neighborhood, sandwiched between the San Jacinto foothills and the neighborhood of Old Las Palmas, was built almost entirely by the Alexander Construction Company, with Palmer and Krisel creating many of the home designs. The A-frame homes (also referred to as Swiss Miss homes), of which there are 15, were designed by Charles Dubois.
RACQUET CLUB ESTATES
360 HOMES
BUILT: 1959 - 1962
Approx sq.ft. 1225
ARCHITECTS: Palmer and Krisel for the Alexander Construction Company
This is the second neighborhood built by the Alexander Construction Company (the first was Twin Palms in south Palm Springs). All the houses in this development (with the exception of the seven Steel Development homes in the north section of this tract) have the same floor-plans of 1,225 square feet, but the post-and-beam construction allowed the ceilings to soar upwards and the clerestory windows and open floor plans made the spaces seem much larger. Variations in exterior materials, decorative perforated brick, and varying window placement allowed the houses to appear different from each other, thus avoiding a cookie-cutter tract development look. Although the homes had the same square footage at their inception, owners have added on to the homes over the years, a testament to the flexibility built into the bulding plans and the genius of the post-and-beam construction.
SUNMORE ESTATES
140 HOMES
BUILT: 1957 - 1958
Approx sq.ft. 1287
ARCHITECTS: Wexler & Harrision for the Higgind-built homes (11 homes). William Krisel for the Alexander Construction Company.
SUNMOR is a well-known central Palm Springs neighborhood comprised of a remarkably intact collection of mid-century homes built in the late 50s and early 1960s. The neighborhood is bordered by Palm Springs City Hall and the International Airport on the east, Farrell Drive on the west, and East Tamarisk and Andreas Road to the north and south respectively.
The two primary builders of Sunmor houses were locally prominent builder Robert "Bob" C. Higgins and the nationally prominent team of Robert Alexander and his father, George Alexander, of the Alexander Construction Company.
TWIN PALMS ESTATES
90 HOMES
BUILT: 1957 - 1958
Approx sq.ft. 1600
ARCHITECTS: Palmer & Krisel
This is the first neighborhood tract in Palm Springs built by the Alexander Construction Company and it's the Alexander's second Palm Springs project after the Ocotillo Lodge (which is adjacent to Twin Palms to this day).
Originally called Royal Desert Palms, these homes were the first examples of mass housing in the desert (until Twin Palms, all homes were built individually). Using standardized housing footers, the 40 x 40-foot plans looked much larger than their 1.600 square feet because they were stretched across the 100-foot lots with added breezeways and attached carports.
The homes had few windows facing the streets, but opened up in the back to standardized in-ground swimming pools.
Actress Debbi Reynolds was one of the first buyers. The designs made use of forced-air heating and, more importantly, air conditioning, which allowe Palmer and Krisel to design homes without the usual heavy sunshade overhangs, thick walls, and regulatory cross ventilation doors and windows.
To avoid having the neighborhood look repetitive (since the homes had basically the same floor plans), they varied not only placement of the house on the lot, but they used varying methods to make the homes look custom: using a long stucco sun flap that protruded down from the roof-line, using 8 x 11" blocks, striking the blocks deeply to catch the shadows and light, or by setting each fourth block on each third row two inches to create a decorative pattern.
RAMON RISE (Little Beverly Hills)
80 HOMES
BUILT: 1957 - 1958
Approx sq.ft. 1600
ARCHITECTS: Palmer & Krisel
Ramon Rise neighborhood,a cluster of vintage mid-century modern Alexanders is located in central Palm Springs south of Ramon Road and west of El Cielo, near the Bel Air Greens and Mesquite Country Club Golf Courses. This area of Alexander homes is a lesser known area and a smaller cluster of Alexanders. This area is known as Little Beverly Hills because the streets in this neighborhood are named similarly to many of the streets in Beverly Hills, Ca.
