(first posted 12/19/2016) Hows this for a genuine brougham-style bathroom? Wouldn’t this cheer you up in the morning? Just don’t miss when you take a pee.
This 1969 Palm Springs house is a genuine time capsule, virtually unchanged from the day it was built in 1969, except for the kitchen (sadly). It’s for sale ($835,000), and the full listing and more pictures are here, but I just had to share some of these with you. Truly broughamtastic!
That bathroom obviously is part of the master suite.
Even the tv looks original.
Here’s the dressing room, or makeup room, or the fine art gallery.
The Grand Ville living room.
And from the other side.
The well-padded bar.
In the den.
Love that padded edge on the table. Baby-proof? Or designed to catch spills?
The guest bedroom?
The kids’ bedroom? Naw; no kids ever lived here.
The rather spartan guest bathroom.
The dining room.
Those chairs are simply to die for. They look like they’re from the Emerald City in Wizard of Oz.
Hallway.
The outside isn’t much to look at, although the ironwork looks impressive.
So what cars are you going to buy to park in the double garage?
It’s really wierd how the realtor copy just mentions the custom drapes etc. without any characterization at all. If there weren’t any photos someone would think it sounded great and then have a truly jaw dropping experience in every room. Except the kitchen. But the listing does not mention that it was redone, and the flooring is the same as the next room. I think maybe it just seems out of place because maybe someone actually removed the silver and orange flowered wallpaper and painted the wall off white, of all things, and replaced the refrigerator. The cabinets are at least a couple decades old and they never bothered to put handles on them. And the dishwasher looks like 1969 to me, definitely not much later. Weird, but it could be an original part of the house and it just looks out of place because of what the buyer did to the rest of the place.
Not to my taste, but somehow appealing.
I suspect the original owner grew up in serious poverty in the 1930s,then made decent money in the post war boom period.This was their reward to themselves, alongside something like a Stuz Blackhawk or customised ’73 Eldorado when they retired.
Looking at the general excellent state of the furnishings, they seemed to love it a lot.
I hope it gave them great happiness furnishing and living in it.
uh, trump’s cali pad?
The rooms all have window air-conditioners.
Why would a home like this have not been built with central A/C ?
Ahh velour luxury. To match the driveway, I would line it with more velour. To start: a baroque Dodge Getaway van with all the trimmin’s including captain’s chairs pour tous… next, a 1992 Lincoln Town Car with more sumptuous velour. After that, a diesel pusher RV with a chauffeur dressed in suede that has fleece blankets for its linen brigade.
Pussy cat would have a velour condo-scratching post and Fido a fur lined doggy door with button tufted doghouse in the back 40.
The Harley Brougham would have have velour button tufted seats with landau saddlebags with Harley Crest.
Finally the Tonka F-650 would come with 10 lug wire wheels, more landau, and obligatory velour.
Everything with floor pans and/or foot rests would have deep, deeep, cut-pile carpeting for ultimate comfort and luxury.
And finally, the smartphone, phone, PC, fridge, and toilet seats would be fur lined as well.
Sigh.
It’s what dreams are made of.
I can barely afford my house I paid $75K for in 08. Much less any cars to put in the garage. I’ll let you guys buy it.
OMG. What a scream. I love kitsch from the period, but there’s just too much.
I have the Better Homes & Gardens decorating books from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Definitely of a period. I know nothing about decorating, but the pictures in those books are very much like what you see with this house.
The acrylic grapes on the table are definitely up my flue as I have a good sized collection of them. Platinum grade tacky and give me pleasure every time I see them.
Additionally, my house is partially furnished with things that have been in my family since childhood: Broyhill Sculptra bedroom set, marble topped coffee and end tables and pristine chair [1963], outrageous lamps and ashtrays from the 50s and 70s I’ve scored from antique shops in Newport OR.
People don’t get it, but it makes me smile.
I’ve refinished a coffee table with marble inserts from a set my parents had dating back to 1970 [one of the lamps, avocado green and gold comes from that set] and it gives a great deal of comfort being around those things as my parents are both gone now.
The pieces are all real wood [not that wood toned particle board and “bonded ” faux leather crap made today] , high quality stone and cloth and will last another 50 years.
I actually purchased two chairs in avocado green velour at an antique mall here in Tucson to “bring the whole room together”. It’s like the living room that the kids could never enter in the 60s. I savor the reaction from service people when they walk in the door. Priceless.
But an entire house like this would suffocate me. It’s just too much.
Fandangtastic!! This is the from that era which just predates the cheesy open shirt, from the period when the protests against Vietnam war were raging- but these people were cocktailing (and pilling) it through, ignoring the outer world. Their high standards of perceived perfection were the fertile rhizome that influenced immensely successful designers of today like Kelly Werstler and Jonathan Adler. Sure, both riff mostly off the early sixties but there is definitely a link.
In the garage, three important items:
1) a Jag (referred to as such) E-type convertible
2) a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow
3) a hat box filled with slinky lingerie that the perfect wife wore when the gardener came over to attend to her non-horticultural needs on Tuesdays (while the husband was at golfing) and the exact *same* box of lingerie the husband wore Fridays (when the wife was at the tennis club) for the pool boy’s visits, attending to more than just the pool, if you get my drift. All this precision was undoubtedly balanced by an unexpected kink or two.
A guest suite at Trump Tower?
Gotta be honest-love the house! But then, I’m a sucker for vintage stuff.
I like it too, if for no other reason than for being a “survivor” (whatever that is in house enthusiast terms). You just know it’ll be gutted and flipped into another boring ass house with crappy disposable modern sensibilities.
The only saving grace here is that it’s in Palm Springs, where if anywhere there just might be a buyer interested in preserving something like this. Obviously it’d be wiped off the map if it was in Peoria, but in Palm Springs it’s actually got a chance.
Time capsule is the verbiage in house parlance. I always cry a little bit when I see savage whiny spoiled entitled brats smashing beautiful 1950s tilework so they can put boring crap from Home Depot in and have the same granite or quartz kitchen that all their friends have.
xequar: I’m with you. My first RE purchase was a condo built in 1957 that had absolutely perfect chocolate brown counter tile and knotty pine cabinets. I would never have touched it for the world.
2nd purchase was a SF Valley house [1947 early postwar housing boom] in Van Nuys with, again, perfect tile counters in aqua with a maroon accent strip.
It had also had a 70s update with some wallpaper in aqua and avocado green, but it worked and I didn’t change a thing. It was a happy place to be.
There’s one flipping show I watch and all of the wife’s decorating choices are white and gray. As dull and boring as car interiors have become.
The “whiny, spoiled, entitled brats” think history began on the day they were born.
They’ve got the cliches down: “open floor plan” “granite” “stainless steel” “put our stamp on it”, “so outdated” , “blow a wall out” “I can see myself entertaining here” and “charm”. Ugh.
“Oh look. A window. I love the vintage charm. I can see myself looking out the window”.
What I wanted to be sure of was the roof didn’t leak, the electrical worked and the plumbing wouldn’t explode.
But these snowflakes could care less so long as it’s all shiny and sterile looking. Even if it’s a cheesy first time over priced flip.
To be fair, it wouldn’t be a very exciting TV show if it consisted of a roof inspection.
I dunno, Mike Holmes is the most trusted man in Canada and has made a pretty lucrative career out of TV shows about house inspections et cetera.
True, Mad Anthony. But the mindlessness is just grating.
If all the appliances, plumbing and electrical work, the roof doesn’t leak and the place is livable it doesn’t “need” to be “updated” to be able to live in it.
30 year mortgage. Plenty of time to get into further debt.
I would think it would make more sense to live in it, discover what works and what doesn’t and make changes rather than having the latest trendy flash just because everyone else has it.
But then, that’s just me. The featured couples always seem to have such delicate sensibilities rather than long term plans.
Right! I mean, can you imagine this 1940 powder room escaping one of those shows?
I wouldn’t touch that powder room, xequar. I love period stuff. Thanks for the shot.
About the size of the entire bathroom in my 1947 shack in Van Nuys.
Must have been pretty upscale to have a second toilet back then, much less a powder room !
Wow. That wall tile is really interesting, and I didn’t know they were doing pink porcelain that far back–thought it was more of a 50’s thing. Very nice.
My main floor bath is original tile from ’47–just black and white but it’s appropriate to the house. Sadly someone replaced the sink and counter in the 90’s or ’00s but I’m glad it wasn’t completely redone.
The one thing I cannot abide, though, is a tile kitchen counter. Yes, they are often part of period décor (I think more common on the west coast than here back east.) But how the *hell* do you keep it clean? Grout and food prep are not friends.
I have that exact sink in my basement powder room. American Standard from 1951. The toilet was long gone replaced by an ’80s white one that didn’t work well and needed to be replaced. There were still two manufacturers making pink toilets as of 6 years ago when I moved in but one of those I know discontinued it (I’m sure there is demand for colored bathroom fixtures still, but these companies don’t market them to mid-century home owners; if you didn’t peruse their online catalogs you’d never know they still made them). Anyway at the time I was planning to renovate the bathroom and even bought an elegant European white sink, but that project has and many others has been put on infinite hold.
Don’t forget, all this new stuff that “you just HAVE to put in!” is made by the sponsors of the show.
After looking at the other site where this was recently featured and the comment there that the current owner is the second owner I’d say that the furnishings are not original to the house. I’m thinking 1975ish is when the majority of the current decorating was done.
Looks like late 60s, to me Scoutdude. Have you ever seen any episodes of The Mothers In Law [67-68 IIRC] ? The sets are filled with this sort of decorating.
Eye numbing collectively. Don’t try this at home. Less is more.
You keep making assumptions without any factual basis. The house was built and furnished by a builder for himself, in 1969. In 1994, after he passed, it was sold the the parents of the current sellers, who have also recently passed. Two sets of older folks.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Palm-Springs-house-untouched-since-1969-hits-the-10804286.php
The realtor indicates that the furniture was custom made for the house. The wicker stuff might not have been, but most of what is shown looks like it would have been the original.
Maybe someone can lease it out for studio work. A select few houses in LA have been in multiple movies.
To bad the kitchen was disturbed. Maybe blueprints are on file and a restoration initiated.
Reminds me a bit of “Love American Style” or “Name of the Game” TV shows.
Looking at the pictures the kitchen is the weakest link of that house. I wish it had some of the same “style” that the rest of the house has. Somehow granite and stainless won’t look right in that kitchen. I would prefer some avocado green or harvest gold appliances!
That’s the house the Brady family would buy if they’d have won the lottery…
Somebody better get some purple and yellow paint in that kitchen so it can clash with everything else too. A horror movie around every corner. Just awesome.
I have pictures of my great aunt’s house when we cleared it out. Stuck fimly in 1954 when she moved in. A legendary family story of how it came to be.
I think we can conclude that brougham was a mistake in both cars and houses because it seemingly universally ended up looking tacky instead of fancy.
And mid century houses fit better into their own capital anyway.
Paul, what an interesting discovery! You’ve written before (using a picture of President Reagan at his kitchen table) about how comparatively small houses used to be, and I have to say based on my slight knowledge of greater Palm Springs area, that this house, though incredibly gaudy, was quite grand at the time! 3,350 square feet was big!
My grandparents, who were quite wealthy and lived in Brentwood, had house about 15 miles southeast of this house at the same time in Indian Wells at the entrance of Eldorado County Club, and by today’s standards its low profile would make it seem tiny. It was actually quite nice a fairly modern, built around 1964 I think. I took a picture from Google earth to show.
Anyway, their cars were Lincoln Continentals and Ford’s through the 1960s and 70s. But the car that was parked in the special third garage door was President Eisenhower’s golf cart (apparently Poppa bought it used, but I don’t know the whole story).
So my guess for the Broughamtastic house is definitely Cadillac Eldorado or Stutz, but with a custom golf cart as well!
How is the city of Palm Springs for ready cash? Surely a time-capsule such as this with all its original furnishings intact must be a pretty unique proposition and having survived nearly half a century, be worth preserving.
I have been to a few historic houses in Melbourne that are owned by local councils, and to have the furnishings still with the house is very rare.
This looks fantastic to me, I will take baroque festive over clinical any day of the week.
As far a vehicles for the garage, A green first gen Cordoba with t-tops and a Scout.
I just want to know how you keep 50 year old carpets looking this clean and fresh. Mine are six years old and already getting threadbare in high-traffic areas, not to mentioned stained and difficult to clean. Also, that bathroom is bigger than my entire last apartment.
Did the furnishings actually convey with the house sale? Usually they don’t, no matter how much they’re on display in the real estate listing photos. Unfortunately the link to the listing is gone so all I can tell now is that is was listed by Berkshire Hathaway; ironic for the sort of house Warren Buffett would never live in given his famously modest tastes.
Car in garage: 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman
The initial photos make me think that this is the interior of Barbie’s Dream House. Some of the later ones I believe are the re-model once the Lucky Charms guy bought it from Barbie (and Ken).
Mar
A
Lago ?
Looked it up on Zillow. It took seven more months to sell this house (August 2017) at a deep discount—$800,000 (original asking price was $850k.
Those owners kept it for a year and a half before putting it on the market for $1.7 million. It took six months to sell for $1.1 million.
13 months later it was back on the market for $1.9 million but the listing was taken down after six months with no sale.
The most recent listing suggests it was not re-decorated by any of the owners in the last six years.
If I remember correctly, the 2016 listing showed a kitchen decorated in an early 1990’s style like my own.
The kitchen in the 2022 listing can not be more that a few years old. However, it does match the theme of the rest of the house.
As a comment above noted, a movie studio should snap this up; it could be sets for multiple late 60s or early seventies movies, of which there seem to have been quite a few lately.
MY EYES!!
MY EYES!!!
Just the first shots sent me immediately to YouTube, to play ‘Black Hole Sun’ as loud as I thought the neighbours would tolerate.
Much as I hate the E-type suggestion, it does seem appropriate somehow. As long as it’s a 2+2 with the 12cyl.
Taking a look at the 178 photos of this house that are currently on Zillow, I’m impressed by how well the owners have cared for this house. Despite the elaborate decor, it appears as clean as a whistle, and in good repair.
To me it looks like it was built by someone with new money – either an entertainer or the ex-wife of a successful businessman or industrialist – but that money has now been around long enough to be approaching the vaunted status of old money. Or maybe it was built as a second home by someone whose main residence is a very traditional home that has been in their family for years, if not generations. Either way, I’d love to know who built it and/or owned it all these years.
Jeez, who first built and lived in that house, Zsa Zsa Gabor? I’d go blind with all that bling. But it is appropriate for the Hollywood community who have homes in Palm Springs.
TACKY, to say the least. It could be used for a few sets in a John Waters movie!
You beat me to the punch….
I’m with those who love going through time capsule houses and likewise would not want to see it ripped out. The last This Old House I ever watched was the obligatory ‘first walk through’ episode with the most magnificent and immaculate (salmon) pink and grey tiled bathroom. They ripped it all out, and I never watched it again.
Agree with you there!
Thinking it’s the “1969” version of a luxurious, pseudo tacky, “1965” home.
My house was built in 1968…when I bought it in 1993, it had an avocado stove; sparkle in the spray ceiling; the original bordello red shag carpet in the master bedroom; Sears Kenmore gold tone washer & dryer in the laundry room; and peel & stick tiles in the kitchen and den. In keeping with the 60’s trend, all the walls were a dingy yellow/orange color because the entire family smoked.
Took we 3 plus years to bring up to the 1990’s.
Think goodness I missed most of that period in the 60s as I graduated from high-school 1969, left home to study architecture in oh so subtle Miami. While in school valet parked autos at a club on Miami Beach (had to have the look and drive a manual). Met a young lady there, who ‘escorted’ men with New York accents. She would tip me $20 each time I opened the car door for her (coming & going). We later became friends and would go to the dico clubs together and dance. Besides our innocent fun times together, her Miami Beach ocean front 2-bedroom high-rise apt. remains in my mind. Early 70’s, carpet / upholstery, all textiles custom colored in a sky blue to match her eyes. At the time enjoyed sky-blue.
Moving foreword a decade, after I became an Interior Designer, landed in design firm, NYC. OMG, the glitz 80s. I was hired because I could both do glitz and not be intermitted by self-indulgent rich people. My first client account I was assigned to was, Trump, Atlantic City.. In my now senior years I tend to remember both the worst and best of my Interior Design career experiences. One project I wish I could forget is when I renovated some high-roller suites at the Trump casino hotel In casino hotels, high-roller suites were free in the 80s. Client (a Trump not to clarify) insisted large/long custom made sofas be covered in white silk. Each sofa cost as much of a mid-size auto. Each suite required three back up sofas in case one was stained. A high roller suite required a one-hour turn-around between guests even if it required changing furniture. Not surprised when that casino hotel went bankrupt.
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Great story Al! I have to say that both Atlantic City and your former client came to mind when I read this post.
Good grief. I can feel the allergies (those carpets!) from 5000 miles and an ocean away. And yes, there are a number of cars to go with this place, none of which I would ever desire or own.
I’m just glad this place has escaped the flood-tide of “flipper gray” (which is not named after the dolphin!), repeatedly, since 2016.
I like it, but if it were mine I’d want something that would a break from it while out on the road. BMW 2002.
In reality I agree with the second-home theory, the owners would occasionally come down from LA in their Cadillac or suitably high-end station wagon but the car most frequently seen outside it would be the caretaker’s Valiant.