SWISS MISSES
Amid mystery and misgivings, the chalet-like
Swiss Miss homes have fans soaring with affection

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

To some people, they seem wacky. To others, they're tacky. Owners love their soaring living areas and the views they get through 18 feet of glass. Like them or not, the flat-roofed homes with their boisterous, two-story A-frame gables that plunge into the ground have emerged as a Palm Springs icon, and even have a pet name -- the 'Swiss Miss.'

Ironically, however, 'Swiss' is not how the Swiss Misses' biggest fans see them. Joan and Gary Gand, who have done more than anyone to love and publicize these ungainly mutts of modernism, see their house as less Swiss Miss than Fiji Frolic. "To us," says Gary, "it's more tropical."

Truth be told, the 'A-frames' -- as those who are unwilling to argue ethnicity call them -- do resemble both Swiss chalets and South Pacific homes of poles, bamboo, and plaited fronds -- to a degree. (In Switzerland, the steep gables were designed to shed snow; in the tropics, monsoon rains. Real Swiss chalets, of course, are much more rustic and heavy-timbered. And in the South Seas, gabled dwellings usually float high above the ground on pilings.)

There is at least one thing about the Swiss Miss everyone can agree about. They are nothing like any other house in their neighborhood, the upscale Vista Las Palmas, which started construction in 1958. And, the inquisitive Gands learned soon after buying their home in 2003, therein lay a mystery. Why were these homes so different from all other homes? Their search for answers led them into the bowels of Palm Springs City Hall, and through an unnerving encounter with an indignant, and legendary, architect.

Gary, a well-known sound engineer, and Joan, who helps run the family business, Gand Music and Sound, take modern architecture seriously. In the Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, where they keep their other home, they helped found the preservation organization Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond to protect modern homes designed by the architectural firm of Keck and Keck Brothers from McMansion-ization.

In Palm Springs, they fell in love with the Swiss Misses while searching for a desert home -- even though everyone else they met "was focusing in the butterfly roofs," Joan says. But, she says of their A-frame, "This just has its own special vibe."

It may have helped, as Joan says, that "we're also into the whole Tiki thing, so much so that when they wanted a Tiki head of their own they sought out Leroy Schmaltz of Oceanic Arts, the legendary Tiki designer who helped popularize the fad for all things Polynesian starting in the mid-'50s. "We call it tasteful Tiki," she says of their home's design motif, which means a relatively restrained palette of Polynesiana, though it does include a fountain in the backyard featuring Tiki gods and flaming Tiki torches.

The Gands, to be fair, take an even-handed approach in writings about the A-frames. "Both futuristic and Tiki at the same time -- by way of Innsbruck, Austria," they wrote in an online article for JetSetModern.com. And, they added, "The houses' elevations are from another world, where huts in Fiji or Tahiti somehow collided with Heidi's house in the Alps."

They also noticed how many A-frames could be spotted in Vista Las Palmas -- they have counted 15 -- and noted that they are apparently the only such houses in town. They discovered other architectural landmarks with a South Seas motif, including the Royal Hawaiian Estates, a condo project at the south end of town, and the Caliente Tropics motel.

Vista Las Palmas, they knew, was largely developed by Alexander Construction Co., run by George Alexander and his son Bob. Bob, who was in charge of the firm's Palm Springs operations, worked with the architectural firm Palmer & Krisel, whose lead designer, William Krisel, is responsible for most of the city's Alexander homes.

The Gands assumed therefore that their home was designed by Krisel. When they met during lunch at an event sponsored by PS Modcom (the Palm Springs Modernism Committee), Joan and Gary said how much they admired his work. Then Joan told him about their Swiss Miss. "He just stopped right there," she remembers. " 'That's not one of my houses!' He was pretty gruff about it."

Krisel, who ended up enjoying the lunch, does feel strongly about the matter. Like most modern architects, he takes his work seriously. And the Swiss Misses, he says, simply aren't serious. "When you're doing Tiki and stuff like that, most architects wouldn't do that," he says. "It's not really architecture. It's like Disneyland."

"All of them are totally inappropriate for the desert location," Krisel says. "The Fiji Tiki belongs at the beach, and the Swiss Miss belongs in the mountains that have snow in the winter."

He also notes that the slope of the gables is too shallow to suggest Fiji, but is closer in design to a chalet. "I've never been inside one of those," he continues. "I refuse to go inside them. I can't stand looking at them." He adds, "Bob would have never built those."

Although the Gands were disappointed that their home was not a Krisel design, Joan says, "We were also excited that it's a mystery. It makes it special."

Trips to the Palm Springs archives didn't resolve the mystery. Building permits didn't list the name of the architect. Old-timers in the neighborhood couldn't tell them who had designed the houses. From studying early neighborhood photos, the Gands noticed that Swiss Misses were among the first houses built in Vista Las Palmas.

The Gands also found original brochures suggesting that Vista Las Palmas wasn't entirely an Alexander project, nor entirely designed by Palmer & Krisel. The brochure for one of the development's phases, 'Summit Las Palmas,' for example, proclaimed that at least some of the models were "architecturally designed by Charles DuBois, A.I.A." But none of the models shown, however, was an A-frame. "We'll never know, I think, what really happened," Joan says.

Krisel has a pretty good idea, however. Vista Las Palmas was a venture shared by the Alexanders and a longtime builder named J.C. (Joe) Dunas, Krisel says. And unlike Bob Alexander, Dunas was not committed to modernism. "He said, 'I want you to do more traditional houses for people who don't like modern,'" Krisel recalls. Krisel refused, so Dunas went elsewhere.

Not much is known about Dubois. Krisel says he was a building designer, not a trained architect, who joined the American Institute of Architects after receiving his state architectural license as part of a deal that gave such licenses to longtime building designers who had sufficient experience.

Dubois designed a tract of homes in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley in 1961 for the Don-Ja-Ran Construction Company, according to Adriene Biondo, chair of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. He also is credited with home designs at Hollywood Riviera Estates from 1954, at Compton Estates that same year, and at Santa Anita Estates in 1955, all in the Los Angeles area.

Adding to the mystery, Gary recently found an ad from a 1974 issue of 'Better Homes and Gardens Building Ideas' selling plans for a house that looks exactly like the Palm Springs Swiss Misses -- suggesting that exact replicas may be found elsewhere in the country. Chalet-fronted houses, of course, are not restricted to Palm Springs. Similar Swiss Miss facades can be found coast to coast, often on ranch-style houses, and sometimes on houses draped in false-Tudor half-timbering. But few share the modern styling of those at Vista Las Palmas.

Whatever their provenance, Swiss Misses have their fans in Palm Springs. "They have this wonderful openness," says Meredith Miller, who moved into her Swiss Miss in 1997. Like all of the A-frames, hers is roughly based on Krisel's plan for the Alexanders, which means an open interior and a wall of glass open to the backyard. With the Swiss Miss, that translates to a two-story wall of glass, providing an expansive view of the San Jacinto Mountains that fans say is unparalleled among tract homes in town.

As in all the A-frames, the shingled gable runs from the front of the house to the back, and covers the central living area. Flat roofs top other areas, including the dining area in Miller's house. Gable styles vary, giving each home a distinctive look. Some gables loom far out over the entryway. Others are shallow. Most plunge low, their eaves almost touching the ground -- but at least one has a truncated gable that stops halfway. Roofs were originally white Bermuda tile.

Front facades feature rustic board-and-batten or tongue-in-groove siding. All have stone walls guarding their front doors, sometimes to the right of the door, sometimes to the left, sometimes on both sides. The stone always matches the stone of the chimney, and the stonework in every house is different. Thin rectangular columns, sometimes resting on the wall, at other times descending to the ground, help support the gable.

Some are single A-frames, and some are 'double,' meaning that a second gable floats atop the first for part of its journey across the center of the house. Where the planes of the roofs overlap -- generally where the entrance hall meets the living room -- a clerestory window shaped like a parallelogram occupies the space between lower and upper roof.

By their very nature, the Swiss Misses suggest fairyland. One owner has gone even further, placing a lion on his front lawn along with a Dr. Seuss-like light stanchion, adding an archway of rock to the entrance, and painting the trim turquoise and the support poles lavender.

The Gands, whose Keck-and-Keck house in Chicago is flat-roofed and serious, enjoy their desert home because it is neither. "Every roofline in here was angled," Gary says, remembering how he fell in love with the Swiss Miss. "Everything is kooky and cockeyed -- versus our other house, which is a Miesian box."

Besides writing about the Swiss Misses, Joan has formed an informal Swiss Miss Club, e-mailing other owners to get together for 'meetings' to socialize and exchange Swiss Miss tips.

Bob Dickenson encountered his Swiss Miss, which is a few doors from the Gands', at an open house. "We saw that soaring roofline, the view up to the mountain. It seemed to epitomize the Palm Springs life," he says. "The high ceilings make such a difference," says Justine Hamilton, whose Swiss Miss is on the other side of the subdivision. "I could never live in another house with standard 12-foot ceilings."

Still, Krisel isn't the only one who has had misgivings about the houses. Robert Baeten, who lives in a Krisel-designed house in Vista Las Palmas, found them an immediate turn-off. "They reminded me of the International House of Pancakes," he says. Since then, he concedes, his fondness has grown.

Fashion designer Mark Ware also had his doubts. "I didn't get it at first," he says. But today, while awaiting completion of a custom home, he's living in a rental Swiss Miss that's been engagingly restored to an early '60s vibe, complete with blue shag rug. He's a convert. "Some people love the whole idea of a Swiss Miss," he says, "and some people don't get it."

On the Trail of the Swiss Miss

Swiss Misses can easily be spotted by cruising the streets of Vista Las Palmas. Strolling or biking is even better. The neighborhood, one of the city's most picturesque, is bounded by Stevens Road on the north, Crescent Drive on the south, Via Monte Vista on the east, and the mountains on the west. Among streets with Swiss Mises are Rose Avenue, Crescent Drive, Via Las Palmas, Via Vadera, Camino Sur, Dry Falls Road, and Abrigo Road.

Photos: John Eng

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