SectionArchitectureHomes · Businesses · ChurchesArchitecture · Homes · Palm SpringsInside a Wexler steel house, sixty-four years after the steel went upDonald Wexler's prefab steel houses were meant to be built by the dozens. Only seven were. Here's how they went up, why the tract stopped, and what living in one is like.Architecture · Churches · Palm SpringsThe desert congregation: eight modernist sanctuaries that turned concrete and glass into something holyFrom William Cody's St. Theresa to a Frey church that is now a theater, the sanctuaries of the Palm Springs desert were built with total conviction. Most still hold services. One now holds a stage.HomesThe Eichler kitchen everybody copies and nobody gets rightJoseph Eichler's architects gave 11,000 California houses an open kitchen with a counter to sit at and cabinets with no handles. The idea is everywhere now. The small, thin, low room that made it work is not.BusinessesGoogie is back on the boulevard: a bank, a bowling alley, and a car wash get a second actA car wash in Whittier, a bowling alley in Sacramento and a gold-domed bank in Oklahoma City have all won protection or funding in the past two years. None of the three stories is finished, and that is what makes them worth watching.HomesCliff May's ranch houses were never meant to be beige. Here's what the records show.Cliff May's houses began with painted flowers and red tile and moved on to redwood, earth tones and a soft grass green. Here is what the records show, and how to find the colors under your own paint.
