Palm Springs Life

Riding the Wave

by Susan LaTempa

Orbit In’s Christy Eugenis and Stan Amy worked with architect Lance O’Donnell for nine months on their hotel, which was originally built in 1957 by Herbert Burns and was most recently known as the Village Manor. Palm Springs LifeThe new owners moved the pool four feet east of its old location in order to build a wall that could accommodate privacy plantings to screen the courtyard from a two-story building next door. They also created a shade structure in the pool area, added central air conditioning, and made some adjustments in the floor plan, creating two new suites. They commissioned a large terrazzo bar from an artist in Seattle and had it trucked down in several pieces to Palm Springs. The cost of refurbishment and furnishing equaled the purchase price of the property. Still, they’re not stopping there. They acquired an adjacent Herbert Burns motel, originally the Town and Desert, in December 2000, and expect to re-open it in the fall…

Christy Eugenis and Stan Amy decorated the individual rooms by first laying down a basic palette throughout, with seagrass floors in all units, and generous use of black and blonde wood. Next, Eugenis developed a theme for each room, often around a special piece of vintage furniture or artwork, and completed the look with both vintage “found in Palm Springs” pieces and high-end new originals. Showpiece artworks include signed photographs by renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who dug out photos of a sister Herbert Burns property. Those period photos show rooms that are eerily similar to the ones where they now hang, down to the clocks on the wall. That’s because Eugenis researched the built-in period clocks and discovered that they had been manufactured – and still were- by American Clock Company in Claremont. She re-installed those same wall clocks in every unit.