The historic landmarks in the SoCal mountain town of Idyllwild are as varied and colorful as the people who live there: a yellow UFO you can live in, John Lautner’s Pearlman Cabin made of unmilled tree trunks and zig-zagging glass, a wooded State Park with dotted with dozens of rustic buildings, and a modernist tram station at 8,500 feet.

I turned 40 at the end of April. What did I want more than anything for my birthday? Same thing I want more than anything, every day of the week: to visit my beloved landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places. But this time I did it somewhere that’s not LA! 

My family headed to Idyllwild, a mountain town in the San Jacinto Mountains, about two hours east of LA. This area was traditionally where the Cahuilla tribe of Native Americans would spend their summers to escape the brutal heat of the desert, just to the north. In the late 19th century, a toll road was built from nearby Hemet, which opened up the area to logging, tourism, and even the Idyllwild Sanatorium – a tuberculosis hospital-cum-resort that gave Idyllwild its name. This town offers no skiing and there isn’t a giant lake nearby, so it hasn’t been as built up as places like Big Bear or Lake Arrowhead; it still feels like nature is winning the nature v. tourists battle here. They even elected a dog, Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller II, as mayor.

Four days up in the woods meant that I could visit one of Idyllwild’s four NRHP-listed sites per day. NO PROBLEM. Strap in, grab a beer and your best blue-light blocking glasses, this is a lot of info. It’s my birthday, I can overwrite if I want to.

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Day 1: Donaldson Futuro House

My first historic Idyllwild site was a giant yellow spaceship on stilts. Nestled up in the woods atop a private driveway on a cul-de-sac, it’s nearly impossible to find unless you’re looking for it (and even then, it’s tough to find). But it’s worth it! It’s called a Futuro House, and there are only about 65 of them known to exist, and only one of them is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And this is it. Though fun fact, another Futuro is situated on a hill just above an LA home on the NRHP, John Lautner’s Harpel House (visit #67). 

Back in 1968, Finnish architect Matti Suuronen conceived of a portable plastic ski chalet, prefab, efficient to heat and easily assembled on steep hillside locations. Given the space age aesthetic of the late ‘60s, it’s perhaps no surprise that the design resembles a 26-foot flying saucer, complete with retractable stairs. 

The Futuro House was originally manufactured by the Finnish company Oy Polykem Ab, and licensed to a couple dozen companies throughout the world. Only an estimated 100 or so Futuros were manufactured by the time the oil crisis hit in 1973 and production of the plastics-intensive Futuro halted worldwide. The remaining ones are expensive collectors’ items…one of them, in Joshua Tree, is a popular AirBnB.  

The Futuro House in Idyllwild was manufactured in Philadelphia for a San Diego entrepreneur named Stan Grau, who was trying to market the thing to Californians. Grau had trouble finding a place to put it due to local zoning restrictions; in 1973 it was moved to a shopping mall for use as a recruitment office for the US Air Force; in 1974-2002 it was sitting behind the Design Center near Balboa Park. 

In 2002 it was purchased by Milford Wayne Donaldson, a preservation architect who served as Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation under Presidents Obama and Trump; he’s also the former California State Historic Preservation Officer, which means I’ve spotted his aesthetically badass signature on a lot of NRHP nomination forms for the sites I visit on Etan Does LA.

Donaldson and his wife spent two years fixing up the exterior, then moved it to Idyllwild where it underwent an eight-year, top to bottom restoration. Moving a 26-foot-wide, six-ton orb up windy mountain roads is a hell of a job; check out this historical booklet, written by Donaldson, for some pictures. Whoever restored the thing did a bang-up job. The inside looks like one of those space-age bachelor pads, spotless and comfy and somehow both retro and futuristic at the same time. Stereolab is definitely playing 24/7 in there. My favorite detail has to be the cantilevered toilet attached to the wall. 

My visit to the Donaldson Futuro occurred less than two weeks after it became a California Registered Historic Landmark. The proprietor of Bubba’s Books (guessing it was Bubba himself?) told me that we just missed the dedication ceremony by five days. “That guy sure knows how to throw a party,” said Bubba. Well, scheisse. 

Recommended Reading

+Donaldson Futuro @ The Futuro House website

+Futuro San Diego @ The Future House website

+Donaldson Futuro history @ US International Council on Monuments and Sites website

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Day 2: John Lautner’s Pearlman Cabin

I knew from the get-go that on the actual day I turned 40, I had to visit the Pearlman Cabin, designed by my favorite architect John Lautner. He’s a frequent customer here at Etan Does LA (here’s the Lautner archives for proof). There are precious few Lautner-designed buildings that are open to the public, and most of us mere mortals will never get the opportunity to walk inside the private residences that made him famous. So I offer my undying thanks to Nancy Pearlman, who regularly opens her Idyllwild vacation home to architects from around the world (and drooling fanboys like me) to experience for themselves. This was the first time I’d ever stepped inside a Lautner, a milestone moment for a milestone day in my life.

The Pearlman Cabin was built in 1957 for Nancy’s parents, Carl and Agnes. Carl was a urologic surgeon and Professor of Urology at the UC Irvine Medical School, and he and his wife were both active patrons of the arts. Agnes, a genealogist, studied both modern architecture and interior design in the ‘40s, and worked closely with Lautner on the conception of the cabin. She requested that he create a space that could accommodate their small family for vacation stays, and also host concerts; she’s also the one who suggested the open kitchen so she could watch the kids or talk to her guests while prepping meals. 

The lot the Pearlmans had purchased was a difficult one to build on, a sloping expanse of rocks and trees that extends downwards from a dirt road. Another architect might look at the gigantic boulder in the middle of the lot and think “Nope, not taking this commission.” In fact that’s exactly what happened with the first few architects and contractors that Agnes considered. 

But Idyllwild’s the kind of place where the stuff that mother nature built is always going to be more spectacular than the stuff that humans built, and John Lautner understood that in his bones. Ever the believer in an architecture that arises out of its environment, he designed a small cabin that floats above that boulder, hoisted up on one side by unmilled tree trunks, which provide support for the conical ceiling. Floor-to-ceiling glass connects the trunks in a zig-zag pattern, and from the outside, the reflection of the trees from the windows seem to shroud the cabin in a leafy embrace. Surrounded by evergreen trees and manzanitas, the Pearlman Cabin is like an idealized expression of a natural process. 

In essence, the Pearlman Cabin is a floating circular multi-purpose room, meant for its inhabitants to sleep in, cook in, play in, hang out in – one room for everything. Radiating out from that core are a small deck and a short wing with a bathroom on it. It was tough to find a local contractor willing to build such an unorthodox design. In the end Agnes’s brother Bill Branch built the entire thing himself off of Lautner’s blueprint. He made one significant adjustment, expanding the closet into a small bedroom after he endured a tough Idyllwild winter with nothing but a tent to sleep in. 

This video walkthrough from an enthusiastic Dutch Lautner enthusiast makes the point that the Pearlman Cabin exhibits some of the structural and design quirks that Lautner would employ again and again. The conical roof, zigzag windows, “tree as pillar” conceit and “house on stilts” idea all made appearances, in somewhat grander forms, in his later homes; Lautner built a hole in the cabin’s outdoor deck to make space for a tree, an accommodation he would also make at Silvertop and the Wolff House, years later.

I also think that this cabin is the purest expression of Lautner’s belief that a building cannot exist in a vacuum; it should be in constant communion with its environment. When I visited, Nancy Pearlman had recently had the glass windows cleaned. Looking out from the inside, my eyes were inevitably drawn out to the forest and mountains just on the other side. Thanks to Lautner’s visionary design and Bill Branch’s craftsmanship (plus a truly superb window cleaning, I should find out who did that), the barriers between inside and outside melted away. I was just a newly-minted 40-year-old dude, eating lunch in the woods. 

(The above clip is from Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner)

NOTE: The below postscript was edited on 5/30/22 based on input from Frank Escher, John Payne and Nancy Pearlman

PS: Nancy told me that a colleague, Charles Carey, loved the Pearlman Cabin so much that he asked Lautner to build him a replica in Fern Valley, about 10 minutes away. Lautner refused to do the copy, but authorized the Careys to construct a redesign. The Pearlmans gave Mr. Carey the original blueprint, and even recommended a couple improvements – e.g. enlarging the bedroom wing and enclosing the area underneath the main living space. The final drawings for the Carey Cabin are attributed to a designer named David de Voist; the John Lautner Foundation does not consider it to be a Lautner design. BUT: still a fascinating opportunity to see his work “remixed.” Just so happens the Carey Cabin was a few doors up from the rental property where I was staying. Here are some pictures.

PPS: if you want to see the Pearlman Cabin yourself, drop Nancy Pearlman a line at nancysuepearlman@aol.com or call 310-559-9160. 

Recommended Reading

+John Lautner’s Pearlman Mountain Cabin nomination form @ National Park Service website

+Hidden Gem in Idyllwild, California – John Lautner’s Pearlman Cabin (Architect on Tour blog, 2017)

+Short video of the interior of the Pearlman Cabin (Robert Payne, 2018)

+UFO in the Woods (Richard Olsen’s HANDMADE HOUSES Journal, 2014 – archived)

+Nancy Pearlman website

Day 3: San Jacinto State Park Historic District

If you can avoid the lure of all the tchotchke shops and wooden bear carvers at the center of Idyllwild, I recommend walking north on highway 243 for ¼ mile and spending half an hour among the leafy conifers and rustic architecture in the San Jacinto State Park. The 13 acres you’ll encounter represent the more accessible “Lower Idyllwild Section” of the San Jacinto State Park Historic District, including the park’s headquarters, buildings, storage facilities, campsites, walking trails, and all sorts of other structures encompassing some 85 years of park history.

Many of the structures you see there today date back to the period of 1934-1942, when the National Park Service, California State Parks system and the Civilian Conservation Corps were working together to improve outdoor recreation facilities. The buildings designed in this period are in “Park Rustic” style, made mostly of local, natural building materials (wood and stone masonry) that meshed well with – and were deliberately subordinate to – the surrounding environment. 

After WWII, California State Parks designers developed a new stripped-down variant of the Park Rustic style, cheaper and more utilitarian to fit the funding and materials challenges right after the war. You’ll see examples of this in the Lower Idyllwild Section, like a covered platform that contains a wagon used to haul lumber during Idyllwild’s lumber heyday in the early 1900s. 

Yet another variant of the Park Rustic style was developed in the late ‘50s through the mid-’60s, as part of a trend to modernize park recreation facilities. One example is in the Long Valley Ranger Station in the massive “Upper Mountain Section” of San Jacinto State Park, designed by California State Parks architect Robert F. Uhte and located way up at the top of Mt. San Jacinto. The station is simple and functional, and fits in well with its surroundings, but contains a gabled roof and eaves with visible rafters poking out, for a little bit of visual appeal. A nearby water storage tank was apparently purchased from Southern Pacific Railroad, and reassembled on site in 1964 to provide water to the Ranger Station. 

+Mt. San Jacinto State Park Historic District nomination form @ NRHP website

If you ever want to visit the “Upper Mountain Section” of the San Jacinto State Park, there are only two ways to get there, neither of them easy. Which leads me to the final visit of my Idyllwild getaway…

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Day 4: Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Mountain Station

There are only two ways to visit Idyllwild’s fourth NRHP-listed site: 

1. Hike from Idyllwild through 10 miles of wilderness and 10 miles back
2. Drive back down the mountain, circle around Mt. San Jacinto into Palm Springs, and take an aerial tramway nearly 5,000 feet up from the valley floor to a Swiss chalet-style tram station located at an elevation of 8,516 feet above sea level. 

We’ve got a 5-year-old, and I care for the fate of my marriage, so guess which option we chose? 

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway itself is a feat of engineering worthy of recognition by historians and preservationists. Thus far, the NRHP has only added Idyllwild’s Mountain Station terminal, and its Palm Springs counterpart on the valley floor, on the basis of their architecture. The Mountain Station is a fine example of a commercial building by E. Stewart Williams, one of the seminal “desert modernists” that helped to cement the aesthetic of Palm Springs after WWII – think natural materials like stone and wood, bright earth tones, and lots of glass and long horizontal contours, to integrate with the flat desert environment. Williams moved to Palm Springs in 1946 to join his father and younger brother’s architectural firm of Williams, Williams & Williams. Within a couple years, Stewart became the lead designer, and by 1947, he had designed his first residential commission: Frank Sinatra’s vacation home. Not a bad first gig, huh?

The Mountain Station was first conceived in 1949, and would hover in the background of Williams’s workload for 12 years while they waited to find a manufacturer to produce a cable that could span the entire 2.5 mile length. Work began in the early ‘60s, and it proved quite a challenge. Since the top of the mountain is a protected State Park, they couldn’t cut down any trees or use anything natural from up at the top. They had to haul all of the building materials (gravel, sand, glass, etc.) via helicopter, some 23,000 trips in all. 

It was worth it. The Mountain Station feels like a prototypical alpine ski lodge, surrounded by walls of glass so you can take in the views wherever you are; it’s open and airy on the inside, with plenty of spaces for dining and drinking. A walk on the outside terrace gives you the clearest sense of the aesthetic genius of E. Stewart Williams. In between two angled walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, there’s a rock wall that embraces an outdoor fireplace, with tented orange panels acting as a modernist chimney – the effect is like a giant eagle of stone and glass spreading its wings, ready to take flight. And then on the south side, a long winding pathway descends to a grove of Jeffrey pines and some of the most serene nature trails I’ve hiked.

Technically, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Mountain Station is within Idyllwild’s municipal bounds. But it’s really a world unto itself, flanked to the south side by nature, and to the north side by…air! Open sky! And those magnificent views. From any of its many vantage points, you can see Palm Springs, Joshua Tree and the entire Coachella Valley spreading out before you. At 8,500 feet, the houses look like ants. There were still clumps of snow hugging the trees. Acrophobics need not apply, I could feel the height in my loins. And we haven’t talked about riding the tramway itself! Here’s a video of how it looks from the outside.

Recommended Reading 

+Mountain Station’s supplemental nomination form @ National Park Service website (PDF) – contains architectural drawings, and photos of the construction

+Palm Springs Aerial Tramway history (pstramway.com)

+The architects who built Palm Springs: E. Stewart Williams (Wallpaper.com, 2019)

+E. Stewart Williams properties seek national recognition (Desert Sun, 2016)