Desert Dreamers 14: The Designers

For every midcentury modern architectural gem built in the desert, there once existed an equally distinctive interior. Designers matched the modern structures of  the time armed with an arsenal of bright colors, an array of contemporary furnishings and materials, and a giddy assortment of appliances and technology that allowed them to redefine resort living. 

But while many exteriors have been preserved, very few custom interiors have survived the passage of time and taste. Architecture is labeled “timeless,” while original midcentury interiors are dismissed as “time capsules” or,  worse, “outdated.” 

While many great designers have been drawn to the region and inspired by its natural setting — from William Haines (a silent film star turned celebrity decorator and the man responsible for Walter and Leonore Annenberg’s historic Sunnylands estate) to contemporaries like Martyn Lawrence Bullard (the Sands Hotel & Spa in Indian Wells) — a select few chose to make the desert their permanent home and their muse.

Here, we introduce five outstanding pioneers of interior design whose work matched the sophistication of the region’s architecture, even though very few examples of  their work have survived. 

Elrod’s look was contemporary, polished, and sophisticated, with all furnishings, rugs, upholstery, and lighting  customized for each project. He was a modernist who looked to the future, and he married innovative materials with cutting-edge tech — hiding speakers inside the floating consoles placed on living or dining room walls, adding lighting to the undersides of  sofas, tucking TV sets on hydraulic lifts into chests, and placing control panels for lighting, music, and drapes next to the bed. His color palette exploded with saturated yellows, blues, reds, and greens, and he was the first to introduce the latest lines of French and Italian furnishings and lighting to the desert.

With the arrival of designer William Raiser in 1964, Arthur Elrod Associates expanded into commercial work with the Martin Anthony Sinatra Medical Education Center at Desert Hospital, condominium towers in New York and Miami, and the Johnson Publishing Co. headquarters in Chicago. By the late 1960s, budgets were in the six or seven figures, and Elrod’s bio had changed accordingly, presenting his place of birth as Atlanta, Georgia, instead of Anderson, South Carolina, where he’d grown up on a  farm. 

Elrod’s legacy lies in his own house, created with architect John Lautner on Southridge Drive, and immortalized in  Diamonds Are Forever (1971). A melding of boulders, glass, and concrete, it is one of the world’s most recognized houses and his gift to the city he called home. 

Early one morning in February 1974, Arthur Elrod and William Raiser left Southridge on their way to the studio at 850 N. Palm Canyon Drive when the Fiat convertible that Raiser was driving was broadsided by a truck at the intersection of Farrell Drive and Ramon Road. Both men were killed. Elrod was 49, Raiser was 58. Hal Broderick, who continued the firm until his retirement in the mid-1990s, contributed funds to create the Elrod Sculpture Garden at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and in 2019, Elrod was honored with a star on the Palm Springs Walk of  Stars outside the Architecture and Design Center, which houses his archive. 

The High Flyer

Vee Nisley

(1913–2003)

Piloting airplanes and interior design don’t usually go hand in hand, but that describes the career of Vee Nisley. Born Violet Marie Hart in 1913 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she graduated from the Milwaukee Art Institute’s Layton School of Art in 1939 and opened a design studio there the same year. 

According to research gathered by Linda Holden Clode, a director of the Historical Society of Palm Desert, Vee learned to fly at the Milwaukee County airfields, where she met her first husband, Jerry Nisley, who became her partner in her various business ventures. During World War II, she volunteered for the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots — an all-female branch of the Air Force that flew cargo planes — where she befriended renowned aviatrix Jackie Cochran Odlum, a longtime Coachella Valley resident. 

In 1945, the Nisleys moved to Thermal, where they operated orchards and vineyards. Vee opened a design studio in Rancho Mirage in 1956, followed in 1964 by Vee Nisley Interiors in her own new building with its distinctive barrel-vaulted canopy and signage at 72111 Highway 111. “Former aviatrix Vee Nisley has been active in the desert-area decorating circles since 1945,” a newspaper article noted at the time. “Over $50,000 worth of Western, Eastern, and imported furnishings and decorator items will be available in the new studio.”

Nisley’s signature was stylish, relaxed interiors, and the Sandpiper model units, which she designed in 1958, were among her best-known commissions, aligning with architect William Krisel’s modern vision. Her “breezy desert style emphasized Sandpiper’s theme of carefree desert living,” noted the sales ads. One unit was “furnished in contemporary style with the new blue and green color plus mosaics from Mexico.” A second unit had Danish furniture in settings of yellow and pumpkin. A third “reflects the blues, pinks, and purples of the surrounding Santa Rosa Mountains.” With her own workrooms producing drapes, upholstery, and accessories, Nisley offered a complete decorating and furnishing package, allowing buyers to move into fully finished units within weeks. 

Other model units that Nisley decorated included the Mediterranean-style homes at Thunderbird Villas, Sandcliff, Desert Bel Air Estates, Valley of the Sun, and Green Acres. Over the years, she was involved in founding and serving on the local chapter of  the interior designers association. After Jerry Nisley’s death, she married Egbert H. Van Delden, and they purchased a home in Circle 8 at Sandpiper, where she continued to renovate and decorate units until her retirement in the 1990s.

The Maximalist 

Gary Jon 

(1940–1995) 

Originally from Los Angeles, Gary Jon moved to Palm Springs in the early 1960s and joined forces with established designer Joan Billings, forming the firm of Billings Jon. In 1964, he went out on his own as Gary Jon Interiors. Early clients included Bob and Dolores Hope, Jack and Ann Warner, Dinah Shore, Trini Lopez, and Hal and Martha Wallis. 

Jon’s designs in the 1960s stood out for their striking color palette — lime green, yellow, red, and white — and multipatterned rooms that became his calling card in advertisements that appeared in Palm Springs Life. By the mid-1970s, he followed the migration to Rancho Mirage, where lots were larger and homes had expanded in size accordingly to around 8,000 square feet. Most of his projects, including his own home, were in and around Tamarisk Country Club, including  Tamarisk View Estates, and he eventually moved his office to Rancho Mirage. 

Architects Curtis R. Shupe and Tom Jakway both worked for Jon as draftsmen when they were young. “He was very detailed and worked closely with me on floor plans,” says Shupe, who later worked with Jon as an architect. “His signature designs were curves — in floor plans, in cabinetry, and in furniture, especially using a wood tambour curve around the bottom of sofas.” Jakway, who says Jon had tremendous people skills and a warm, outgoing personality, credits the designer with his own success.

One of Jon’s most successful projects was the Tennis Clubhouse at Mission Hills Country Club that opened in 1976. “A clubhouse comes as close as any structure to architecturally ‘living,’ ” Jon told The Desert Sun. “It has a pulse, a personality, and an existence all its own.” His design encapsulated his philosophy of rooms that could serve multiple functions with flexible, versatile furniture — low tables that could be raised for dining, tiled counters that doubled as buffets, furniture on casters for easy moving. 

By the 1980s, Jon’s style had become more “desert deluxe,” which meant replacing the shiny foil wallpaper and bright colors with softer tones and tactile fabrics. For builder George Holstein’s home at Thunderbird Villas, The Desert Sun reported, Jon installed “a burnished steel and solar-bronzed glass door, an indoor-outdoor garden living room with a vaulted cathedral fireplace in stainless steel, sunken wet bar in brown suede, a ‘hidden kitchen’ in tortoiseshell and Formicas, carpeting inset in ceramic tile borders, primary walk-in closet in suede, primary bath in orange tile and suede.” At the Vintage Country Club in Indian Wells, he decorated one of the first houses in a palette of red, white, and black in what Jakway calls “a very high-end country club feel — rich, bold, and important.”

By the early 1990s, Jon was involved with numerous charitable events. Among his last jobs was a house at Morningside Country Club, which he transformed, The Desert Sun described, “into a delicious layer cake of  white, ivory, and pale beige, frosted with contemporary art.”

The Businessman

Noel   F.   Birns 

(1938–2007)

After graduating from the University of Redlands and the New York School of Interior Design, Noel F. Birns began his career with his father, Henry Birns, at Palm Canyon Interiors. The firm’s senior designer was Ford Munn, whose projects — some with architect Hugh Kaptur — were published frequently in Architectural Digest during the 1950s and ’60s. 

Birns was above all a savvy businessman, and amid the country club construction boom of the 1970s, he saw an opportunity to align with developers with on-site design centers. The centers would be staffed with professional designers to assist buyers in customizing their interiors during construction — flooring, wallcoverings, window treatments — ensuring homes would be presented as complete packages. “I’m confident of  my abilities to meet the challenge of bringing to what is often a second home the feeling and advantages of a first home,” Birns once said. “We understand the desert lifestyle. It is the basis of our expertise.” In 1974, the first Noel F. Birns Design Center opened at William Bone’s Sunrise Country Club. Birns then opened design centers in Sunrise’s Rancho Las Palmas and Monterey country clubs. The following year, Birns was named a vice president of Sunrise Corporation and put in charge of Sunrise Design Centers at their developments in California, Arizona, and Nevada. Other developers took note, and Birns started working with Interstate Properties, Lewis Homes of California, Taylor-Woodward, and the J.H. Snyder Corporation. 

In 1975, Birns merged with fellow designer Steven De Christopher, and they moved their joint firm into a round showroom designed by Ross Patten at 72067 Highway 111 in Rancho Mirage. The complex was expanded in 1976 to house Birns Freight Systems & Builders Inc., a flooring company. In addition to the Design Centers, he created Noel F. Birns Design Studios for smaller developments such as Rancho Village, where developers were adding options once considered luxury extras — spas, mirrored wardrobe doors, icemakers in wet bars, greenhouse windows, and skylights in kitchens — as standard features. 

De Christopher stepped up as the firm’s president and COO in 1978, while Birns became chairman of  the board and planned to spend more time on his other interests, which included horse breeding, diamond importing, and physical fitness programs — he was a Little League Baseball coach and active in local basketball and volleyball leagues.

The Successor 

Steve Chase 

(1942–1994)

Born in New Hampshire and raised in Southern California, Steve Chase’s creative talent bloomed early, building  wood-block houses in his garden. After attending the Rhode Island School of Design and the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Chase launched his career at a design  store in the South Bay.  He spent  $1,000 to build a scale model of a city, complete with a hotel, department store, and apartments, that went on display at the annual design show at the Hollywood Palladium in 1963, which is where Arthur Elrod discovered him.

Chase joined Arthur Elrod Associates in 1967,  just as the firm was moving into its new studio at 850 N. Palm Canyon Drive. “I  had admired Arthur’s designs since I was 17, and working with him fulfilled one of my early dreams,” Chase told Palm Springs Life in October 1980. “Arthur had  great organizational abilities. He taught me how to approach my work, how to achieve order. He knew how to give people an environment that was right for them, how not to impose his own personality.”

After Elrod’s death in 1974, Chase continued running the firm with Hal Broderick until 1980, when he opened Steve Chase Associates in Rancho Mirage. His work was luxurious but  informal, relaxed yet  theatrical, a layering of textures and natural materials, balancing contemporary art with antiques and Mesoamerican artifacts, all unified by expertly placed lighting. “The art is how well those things are assembled, how the total look turns out,” he said. He typically had 30 to 40 projects going around the globe, which were regularly featured in  Architectural Digest, and his clients included Farrah Fawcett, Gene Hackman, Johnny Mathis, and Joan Kroc.

Chase designed several homes for himself, finally creating a custom residence in Thunderbird Cove in the 1980s, and he also had homes in Del Mar and Sedona. Always on the go, Chase immersed himself in philanthropy. He served on the board of the Palm Springs Planning Commission and was instrumental in forming Desert AIDS Project (now DAP Health), which named its Humanitarian Awards after him. His philanthropic interests included The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, McCallum Theatre, and Palm Springs Art Museum. He bequeathed his personal art collection and $1.5 million to the museum to build its third-story Steve Chase Wing and Education Center.

“Steve Chase’s vital gifts changed the thrust of Palm Springs Art Museum into contemporary art and helped transform the physical space,” said Helene Galen, then a member of the museum’s board of trustees, in response to a 2019 exhibition of Chase’s collection. “He was one of the brightest, most talented, and successful  businesspeople I ever knew.”