In the early 1960s, Hollywood’s biggest names flocked to the desert for sunshine, leisure, and long poolside afternoons, cementing Palm Springs as an Old Hollywood playground. Marilyn Monroe was among them — and the home she chose as her retreat, now known as the Marilyn Monroe Doll House, is one of the few from that era to survive largely intact.
Listed at $3.3 million and represented by David Emerson of Coldwell Banker Realty, the nearly 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home was designed by Charles Du Bois, whose body of work in desert modernism helped define Palm Springs' visual identity, and built by the Alexander Construction Company. The company's mid-century residential projects gave Vista Las Palmas much of its architectural character. Monroe owned the home as a vacation retreat in the final years before her death in 1962, a fact that has since given the property an almost mythological status in a neighborhood already rich with architectural legend.
The home's most remarkable quality, however, is not its provenance but its preserved status. Four original bathrooms remain entirely intact, their tiling and vanities preserved in butter-yellow, light-pink, and blue — colors that speak directly to the optimism and domestic glamour of early-1960s California modernism.
The kitchen, though updated in a previous ownership, was reworked with an evident sensitivity to the original character: white and blue cabinetry and a mosaic-tile backsplash echo the palette of the period bathrooms seamlessly. Prior owners, Emerson notes, "were sensitive to midcentury and wanted to do something that felt midcentury." An open-plan living area with fireplace and a separate dining space give the interior a natural, unhurried flow; an original semicircular bar anchors one end of the living room with the casual glamour the era did so well.
Sliding glass doors line the main living area, dissolving the boundary between interior and desert. Outside, a covered patio, pool and hot tub, and fire pit compose a landscape sequence in keeping with the effortless outdoor living the home was designed to support.
In a city where mid-century architecture is increasingly coveted and increasingly compromised, the Marilyn Monroe Doll House stands as proof that the most valuable quality a home can possess is the integrity to remain itself.
View the complete listing by David Emerson of Coldwell Banker Realty.
