ALBERT FREY's house at Palm Springs, California | Clark & Frey, architects

8/07/2025 05:55:00 PM

IN ALBERT FREY's house at Palm Springs, California, you will find ideas if you have a gay approach to life, an open mind and a taste for informality. Designed by Clark & Frey, architects, it is untrammeled by convention but has distinct charm, romanticism and its own sort of elegance. Pools and gardens, a fireplace and a view are all part of the design and his house is not only effective but economical. Mr. Frey started with one room (plus kitchenette and bath) on which he did part of the work himself. Result: a house for $6 a square foot, remarkable even in 1941. Later he added a swimming pool at the cost of materials and refreshments for a pool-digging party. Even then he had plans for enlarging the house. Bedrooms were to be added on one side; a living room on the other. But when it was again possible to build, he had grown so attached to the restrained, simple character of the house that he decided to add only a combined living-and-sleeping room. (A guest cottage is going up 150 feet away.) The second room contributes a hooded brazier as a fireplace, a walled garden with pool and fountain, a skylight for watching the stars at night. Nor has Mr. Frey lost his flair for price-control: the room figured at $11 sq. ft., no small feat for Palm Springs in 1947-48.