Ojo del Desierto: The O'Donnell House
Near Palm Springs, California
Look up at the lower slope of the mountain near the Tennis Club and you can see a two story Mediterranean house with a red tile roof, perched where nothing else was built for years. This is Ojo del Desierto, the Eye of the Desert, better known as the O'Donnell House. It was completed in the mid nineteen twenties as the winter home of Thomas O'Donnell, a wealthy oil man, and his wife.
It holds a special place in local history as the first Palm Springs building constructed above the valley floor, on the mountainside itself. For decades it remained the highest home on the slope, and it was built on land leased from Nellie Coffman's Desert Inn, whose grounds lay just below. The house sits at the edge of the neighborhood that would earn the nickname the Movie Colony, where studio figures bought winter estates through the nineteen thirties and forties to be near the Racquet Club and the desert social scene.
The O'Donnell House survived where many grand estates were lost, earning historic protection and eventually a place on the National Register of Historic Places. Today it still watches over the town from its perch.
