The neighborhoods, and who lived there
Who built each one, which houses are on the record, and the stories people have added since. Every fact links to where it came from.
Old Las Palmas
A citrus grove that became Palm Springs' oldest estate neighborhood
Before the movie stars, this was a citrus grove on the west side of downtown. It was subdivided in the mid 1920s, and over the next forty years it filled with Spanish Colonial estates and modernist houses. Dinah Shore, Kirk Douglas and Liberace all lived here.
Read the story
Vista Las Palmas
The Alexanders' modern neighborhood under the mountain
George and Robert Alexander built this neighborhood with two design teams: Palmer & Krisel and Charles Du Bois, who together designed about 330 houses. Their designs included butterfly roofs, folded plate roofs and steep A-frames, and the round House of Tomorrow is where Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon in 1967.
Read the story
The Movie Colony
Named for the stars who wintered here from the 1930s to the 1960s
The Movie Colony takes its name from the film stars who owned homes here between the 1930s and the 1960s. It grew up in the 1930s around the El Mirador hotel and became, in the Historical Society's words, the private refuge of Hollywood royalty.
Read the story