El Rancho Vista Estates

This enclave of homes has had a recent renaissance in the last 15 years, with many preservation minded folks buying these homes and undertaking serious rehabilitation. Each home features a variety of classic mid-century architectural details including decorative concrete block, clearstory windows and walls of glass opening up to huge mountain view homesites. 

These homes were designed to incorporate indoor/outdoor living, what the desert living is all about.

El Rancho Vista Estates was the first of the Wexler & Harrison residential subdivisions and developed by Roy Fey, a developer from Chicago who developed a real estate empire in Palm Springs.    He saw the potential Southern California Modernist architecture had in the emerging post-war housing market.  His belief in the product led him to use the street name “East Avenida Fey Norte” to memorialize his involvement in the development – a not uncommon practice among residential developers.  The community features approximately 75 homes  located northeast of the Palm Springs International Airport, accessed via Vista Chino.

Each floor plan included an open layout with variations on the roof line:   flat roofs, butterfly roofs, and the down-turned eave, which became something of a signature in later Harrison projects. The homes included other classic mid-century architectural elements like decorative concrete block walls and floor-to ceiling glass walls oriented to spectacular mountain views , plus designs that enhanced indoor / outdoor living.    Harrison owned a home in the development at 1593 Avenida Robert Miguel – an unusual example of an architect living in a neighborhood completely designed by his firm.

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