Sinatra's Twin Palms and the Rat Pack
Near Palm Springs, California
On Alejo Road stands the house where the Palm Springs of legend really began. In nineteen forty-seven, the story goes, Frank Sinatra walked into the office of a young local architect named Stewart Williams wearing a sailor cap and eating an ice cream cone. He wanted a grand Georgian mansion, brick columns and all, and he wanted it finished by Christmas.
Williams, worried the fussy Georgian design would ruin his career, quietly drew up two sets of plans, one traditional and one sleek and modern. Sinatra chose the modern one, and desert modernism gained its most famous client. The house, called Twin Palms for the two palms on the grounds, was finished that same year.
It has a wall of glass facing the mountains, and a swimming pool shaped, whether on purpose or not, like a grand piano. Sinatra lived here through the early Rat Pack years, and fellow performers were regular guests. When it was time for cocktails, Sinatra is said to have raised a Jack Daniel's flag between the two palm trees so the neighbors would know the party had started.
He kept the house for about a decade. It survives today, carefully restored, one of the most photographed homes in Palm Springs.
