Unlike most Palm Springs real estate ventures of the time, Canyon Country Club was built by developers who came from other parts of the country. This led to architects and designers from outside the Coachella Valley being chosen to design significant portions of the neighborhood. These individuals brought different ideas, influences, and design sensibilities. Such was the case at Canyon Country Club Colony, a community where the architect and developer each had experience in feature film set design and art direction. This unique connection to Hollywood manifested directly in the architecture of the place, inspired by a film set deep in the American South.
When the master plan for the Canyon Country Club was laid out in 1961, the developers took special care to include housing options that would appeal to a broad array of potential buyers. In addition to large lots for luxury single-family homes, large parcels adjoining the golf course were designated for a resort hotel, rental apartments, and cooperative own-your-own apartments. Canyon Country Club Colony was allotted a 5-acre, horseshoe-shaped parcel that projected into the northwest corner of the golf course, fronting the sixth, seventh, 15th, and 16th holes. This afforded the majority of the 38 units views of the three man-made lakes that surrounded the complex’s perimeter, bringing up-close views of Eden directly into the living rooms.
At Canyon Country Club Colony, architect Raymond Levanas drew inspiration from his work as a Warner Bros. studio artist to create a community that feels like a film set.
PHOTO Courtesy levanas family
Built by Newport Beach developer Harry Kelso and designed by Raymond Levanas, AIA, Canyon Country Club Colony was conceived and marketed as a component of Kelso’s larger Canyon Country Club Estates, which included the Colony, over 100 single-family fairway homes, and fairway-fronting rental apartments on Murray Canyon Drive. Kelso was a successful tract home developer in Orange County, where he frequently tapped Levanas as his architect of choice. Levanas was one of the leading architects in Orange County and had made significant contributions to the area’s built environment in a broad range of building types and styles. The two men were colleagues at Warner Bros. during the 1940s, working as studio artists like many Southern California architects did during the construction lulls created by the Great Depression and World War II.
At Canyon Country Club Colony, Levanas created a classic example of Southern California garden apartment architecture. Laid out along a symmetrical plan, the Colony’s collection of 19 duplex buildings were connected by footpaths through gardens and recreation areas connecting the community’s residential units, parking, and utility areas. From Calle Palo Fierro, a large circular motor court connected a series of four carports. The carport structures were some of Palm Springs’ best examples of “carchitecture,” with 10-foot-high walls of Maltese pattern screen block curving along the contours of the circular motor court. Small garages integrated into the carport buildings were specifically designed for golf cart storage, and membership rights to Canyon Country Club were offered to owners.
The residential duplex buildings were long and low, with hipped roofs, deep eaves, and integral porticos providing shade in the outdoor living areas. A pronounced emphasis on indoor-outdoor living was achieved with glass sliders in all living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, each opening to its own separate outdoor patio area. Ornate cast iron columns in oak and bird of paradise patterns supported shaded porticos and were perhaps the most prominent character-defining features of the residential buildings. Dating back to the 1930s, Southern California architects had utilized cast iron detailing in a New Orleans–inspired form of revival architecture that stood alongside more popular styles such as the Spanish colonial and Tudor revival styles. In the mid-1960s, the style re-emerged on a limited scale, but this time applied as an ornate counterpoint to buildings that otherwise bore the spare stylings of modernism.
Levanas used similar cast iron elements on several large-scale apartment and tract house communities in Orange County, as well as at the Newporter Inn, at the time the largest luxury resort in Orange County. At Canyon Country Club Colony, the juxtaposition of modernity with the ornate cast iron detailing evoked an architectural statement in keeping with the popular Hollywood Regency style, a moniker that seems appropriate given Levanas’ experience in Hollywood set design. Levanas drew direct inspiration from his work on a specific film, Saratoga Trunk (1945), which was based on the novel by Edna Ferber and set in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The cast iron architectural elements that Levanas created for Saratoga Trunk were later repurposed for additional Warner Bros. films set in New Orleans, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Iron Mistress (1952), Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), and A Star Is Born (1954).
An illustrated advertisement for Canyon Country Club Colony, created by Hollywood set designer and commercial artist Harper Goff.
Courtesy Steve Treinen
Kelso spared no expense when it came to marketing, with significant advertising campaigns in both The Desert Sun and Los Angeles Times. When it came to creating a brand identity for the Colony, Kelso turned to longtime friend and fellow Warner Bros. set design alumnus Harper Goff, the revered commercial artist famous for his work in both motion picture art direction and theme park design. Goff, who lived just across the seventh fairway in a Kelso-built house designed by Hugh Kaptur, created a series of artful illustrations depicting Levanas’ unique architectural designs and the golf-centric life of leisure awaiting prospective buyers at Canyon Country Club Colony.
Today, the complex is the last remaining example of the Canyon Country Club brand name still in use. The original community sign adorns the entry of the complex, along with the ornate carriage lantern and stone wall that have fronted Calle Palo Fierro since 1963.
Excerpted from Canyon Country Club: History and Design of Palm Springs’ Garden of Eden, written by Steve Treinen. Purchase your copy at pspreservationfoundation.org/shop.
