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Building History

Frank Sinatra learned about the scenery of the desert community of Palm Springs from his friend, the composer Jimmy Van Heusen, (born Edward Chester Babcock, 1913-1990), who was also a pilot. Van Heusen had stopped to refuel his ariplane in the small town during the mid-1940s, and became enchanted by its picturesque beauty. He mentioned its allure to Sinatra, and the singer convinced him to fly there that day to show him the landscape. According to Caroline Biggs, writing in the New York Times, "In 1947, Sinatra hired the architect E. Stewart Williams to build the 4,500-square-foot midcentury showplace after spotting the land, and an especially lovely pair of palm trees, from an airplane." (See Caroline Biggs, "Stay Where the Stars Slept," New York Times, 08/23/2020, Business Section, p. 8.)

Not only E. Stewart Williams, but the firm Williams, Williams and Williams was commissioned to design the Sinatra estate. Harry Williams, E. Stewart's father, had worked with a large Dayton employer, the National Cash Register Company (NCR), on various commissions. By the early 1930s, he had come into contact with the local philanthropist and investor,Julia Perrine Shaw Patterson Carnell (1863-1944), who had both inherited a threshing machine fortune and married the banker and NCR executive Harry Gardner Cantrell (1858-1931) in 1909. Julia Carnell wintered in Palm Springs and enjoyed its social scene. She sent Harry Williams to Palm Springs to design a new, stylistically-unified shopping center for the town, what became La Plaza Shopping Center. This master-planned shopping district followed in the vein of J.C. Nichols's famous Country Club Plaza (1923) in Kansas City, MO, and the Janss Investment Company's Westwood Village in Los Angeles, CA, (1929). After the completion of this commission, Harry Williams opened an office in Palm Springs, where his sons E. Stewart and H. Roger would work after World War II.

Sinatra's commission helped to establish the Modern design credentials of E. Stewart Williams. Initially, Sinatra asked the architect to design a Georgian Revival Style house for his Palm Springs retreat. Georgian and Regency Revival architecture was popular for houses in Los Angeles's upper-class neighborhoods of the time, especially Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills and Bel Air. Williams, however, convinced the entertainer that a modern design alternative would be more in keeping with the desert environment. Williams would go on to become a leading architect in Palm Springs, along with William F. Cody (1916-1978), Albert Frey (1903-1998) and Donald Wexler (1926-2015), helping to make the city a center of Modern design in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sinatra first made contact with the Williams firm in 05/1947, and he directed them that he and his first wife, and his first wife, Nancy Barbato, (1917-2018), wanted the $150,000 estate complete by the Christmas holiday that year. This extremely tight time frame resulted in high construction costs and great stress for Williams and his brother. The singer used the house as one of his domiciles between 1947 and 1956, when he sold it. During this time, he divorced Nancy Barbato and took up with movie star Ava Gardner, (1922-1990), who periodically resided in the dwelling after 1948 and her 1951 marriage to Sinatra. In 1956, Twin Palms was purchased by couple who resided here for 43 years, selling it in 1997.

Later owners included Tom and Marianne O'Connell who purchased the estate in 2009. They rented out the estate to those who wanted to absorb Rat Pack nostalgia or enjoyed mid-century architecture. According to the New York Times in 2020: "The entire estate, including its iconic grand piano-shaped pool and a recording studio, is available starting at $2,500 a night (up to $4,219 a night in high season), for a three-night minimum.... Of course, Twin Palms attracts those drawn to its remarkable and stormy cultural history--a crack in the original primary bathroom's sink is rumored to be the result of Ava Gardner throwing a champagne bottle at Sinatra after discovering his tryst with Lana Turner whole Gardner was away on location--but it also summons its fair share of design and architecture buffs."See Caroline Biggs, "Stay Where the Stars Slept," New York Times, 08/23/2020, Business Section, p. 8.)

PCAD id: 7553