“This would be so sexy for you!”
So said a friend of Jeffrey Steenberg’s in 2016, passing along the listing for a three-bedroom, three-bath residence in Araby Cove, just below the Arthur Elrod pleasure palace that surmounts Southridge. From the narrow street, the entrance is below grade and wouldn’t merit a second look except for the unusual center-mounted doorknob. Following the grade down to the back of the property, it’s another tale as the 2,585- square-foot multilevel house hovers on the slope, over the upper terrace and lower pool patio — a breathtaking sight day or night.
Steenberg, of Los Angeles, wasn’t even considering a purchase in Palm Springs, but he’s a history buff and found it appealing that the legendary Howard Hughes owned the house from 1957 until the tycoon’s death (with no will) in 1976. Steenberg was smitten, and he wrapped up the purchase in 2018 for $1.35 million. His vision encompassed a light structural renovation, thorough cleanup of the backyard, and subsequent availability as a vacation rental.
Instead, it was as if he had harpooned a whale, and the creature submerged him in the Slough of Despond.
Once the backyard’s overgrowth was removed, the collapsing retaining wall at the 10,000-square-foot lot’s northern boundary was revealed. That was just the beginning.
A survey showed the wall reached a few feet beyond the actual property line. Further investigation revealed the pool’s mechanical systems were below ground and needed to be raised. The water, sewer, and (leaking) gas lines arose from the bottom end and needed replacement. All of it would require trenching and shoring, scooping and filling — and neighbor approvals. The regulatory and planning stages took a year.
Courtney Newman remembers looking at the house in the late 1990s. “It was kind of in the way, deserted, not well taken care of,” says Newman, president and co-founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee. He acknowledges Steenberg’s “hard logistical work” and overall good stewardship.
Original details in the kitchen include a built-in Western Holly oven with matching range (not shown) restored by RMR Company Inc., of San Diego. Green tones bring the beauty of nature indoors.
In the living room, restored ceiling beams lead the eye to the upper terrace, overlooking the pool.
Before long, though, Steenberg was acknowledging Captain Ahab in the mirror.
“It was absolutely insane,” he says, laying blame for his miseries on the full cash purchase. “If there was a mortgage, I probably would have given it back to the banks. I had no choice but to push on through.”
Seeing a therapist and getting antidepressants helped. Additional assistance came when JRW Foundation-Systems, of Redlands, went to work on what sounds like a gigantic orthodontics project. But JRW founder and namesake John Whittam has experience dealing with limited access and complex jobs relating to foundation issues. “We have arrows in our quiver that we can utilize when we run into challenges,” Whittam says.
There followed months of boring and caissons, contouring and formwork, placing of beams and pouring of concrete. A tall crane entered at the back, in the wash, to tether the desirable palm trees during excavation. Dodging smoke trees, dump trucks carried away tons of boulders and debris from the much earlier construction. Workers dubbed it The Great Wall of Rim Road.
In March 1954, the city of Palm Springs issued a building permit to Robert Fisher for a $15,000 project at the site. Steenberg believes the one-bedroom casita was for Eva Gabor, then between her second and third marriages and appearing in a new movie, Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl. Fisher received another building permit, for an “addition to dwelling,” valued at $12,000 in August 1956. Hughes bought it the next year for his new wife, actress Jean Peters.
“Legend has it that Hughes never lived in the home,” The Desert Sun reported after a special administrator presided over the property’s disposition in October 1976. Robert V. Newman (no relation to Courtney Newman) paid $82,000, although the previous year, the Riverside County assessor had appraised the property at $50,000. Records in the assessor’s Palm Springs office dating to 1969 never showed Hughes’ name, but instead some who were assumed to be front men: Paul Keyes, Kay Glenn, and Davidson Cox. Nevertheless, the county assessor’s spokesman said celebrities’ homes increase greatly in value because of their star quality.
Stairs lead from the backyard pool area to the upper terrace, which Steenberg modernized with the addition of an outdoor chef’s kitchen. The restoration maintained the original patio doors and handles.
Could this be the same locale author Charles Higham describes in Howard Hughes: The Secret Life? Probably not. Hughes and Peters had been living at the Beverly Hills Hotel after their marriage early in 1957, but, according to the biography, they came to Palm Springs to stay at a “rambling ranch-type bungalow of seven rooms in a small clump of tamarisk trees situated between the Racquet Club and the stables.” Hughes’ phobia about germs prompted his bodyguard to remove and burn the indoor plants. Window frames were sealed with tape.
The couple subsisted on chocolate, fruit, and juice. A dead duck was discovered in the pool, but when Hughes noticed that the pool man had six digits on each hand, he fired him, and the duck continued to rot.
Yet certain curiosities at the Araby Cove house do suggest Hughes. His germaphobia led him to specify bronze switch plates, which were embedded in the concrete floor so the lights could be turned on or off with the tap of a toe. Wiring is absent today, but the Hughesian switches, which resemble airplane propellers, were restored and re-set in their original positions when Steenberg installed the new terrazzo surface. Steenberg also senses Hughes’ hand in the absence of doors where they might be expected, as at the top of the delicately floating staircase leading to the lower-level bedroom suite. That suite has another eccentric feature — an electric burner for a teakettle at the end of the long vanity.
Overall, the re-engineering work cost Steenberg about $600,000. He next enlisted PSI General Contractors for structural considerations, and kept tapping his accounts. “It was draw, draw, draw while the stock market was falling, falling, falling,” he recalls.
Steenberg added a poolside cabana and, on the upper terrace, a gleaming chef’s kitchen that would have pleased Hughes. During the summer of 1957, Hughes went to Montreal to look at planes for his TWA operation, and stayed at The Ritz-Carlton. He could not abide having his steaks cooked in the kitchen; when the staff brought a grill into his quarters, he complained about grease leaking from the casters and insisted on inspecting the entire unit for cleanliness.
Steenberg also devoted himself to updating the interior. He had the original Western Holly kitchen range restored by RMR Company Inc., of San Diego. He touched up the three original bathrooms and repainted inside and out. He upgraded the electrical system.
The result delivers the uplifting feeling that is a signature of Palm Springs midcentury modern, and all for only $2.5 million. After three years and seven months, the project reached completion in spring 2023. Steenberg welcomed visitors for tours during Modernism Week 2024 and has since enjoyed avid rental bookings.
“A lot of this work, no one is ever going to notice or care,” he says. “I was just getting through it because I had to — and my love for restoration and preservation.” But in the end, it is indeed sexy. “I had to pinch myself when we were done.”
mark your calendar
The Palm Springs Modern Committee will honor Jeffrey Steenberg’s Howard Hughes Residence restoration with the Residential Restoration Award on Oct. 19 at the 2024 Architectural Preservation Awards. For tickets and additional information, visit psmodcom.org.
