Dwight Polen (left) and Tony Larcombe are photographed next to a 19th century Chinese antique at their store, Dwight Polen, in Palm Springs. / Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun
Modern Love-E. Stewart Williams: E. Stewart Williams designed several prominent Palm Springs buildings including the Palm Springs Art Museum and parts of City Hall.
Explore uptown
What: Modernism by Moonlight, an evening to walk and shop the Uptown Design District
When: 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday
Where: N. Palm Canyon Drive, between Alejo Road and Tachevah Drive
Information: www.palmspringsuptowndesigndistrict.com
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Walk down the north end of Palm Canyon Drive — between Alejo Road and Tachevah Drive — and you'll see a range of shops selling vintage midcentury modern furniture, antiques, contemporary fashion and home wares, along with a growing number of restaurants.
What you won't see is empty store fronts.
While downtown Palm Springs still awaits its renaissance, in the past five years the city's Uptown Design District has grown from a sparsely populated area to become one of the Coachella Valley's most distinctive retail destinations, drawing visitors from across the valley and around the world.
And Modernism Week is one of its busiest times.
“Last year I actually was counting, 50 percent more foot traffic,” said James Claude, co-owner of A la Mod, who just moved the midcentury furniture and consignment shop from an 800-square- foot location into a new, 4,000- square-foot space a block down the street.
“Sales doubled if you consider the phone calls because they were in the store during Modernism Week,” he said.
“Palm Springs is an easy place to look at nice pieces,” said Chuck Hamlin, a part-time valley resident from Connecticut, browsing at A la Mod on Wednesday. “It's concentrated, better quality. You can buy and ship and still be ahead of the game.”
With dozens of businesses in a four-block area, the district is easy to walk, with plenty of eye-catching store fronts to draw in casual shoppers. The midcentury vibe is strong, even in more contemporary shops, but business owners say the district's success has been a community effort, based on a savvy marketing campaign to brand the area as the spot for design devotees of all stripes, visitors or locals.
Lindy Wishard and Jeremy Braun, visiting from Seattle, strolled the district Wednesday, drawn by its midcentury reputation, but said their favorite store was House 849, an 8,000-square-foot wonderland of furniture and art from around the world and from almost every period from baroque to modern.
“There was a nice mixture of antiques, beautiful variety,” said Wishard.
“It's like a melting pot of design,” said Courtney Newman, co-owner of Modern Way Vintage Furniture, one of the district's midcentury pioneers and still a major stop for shoppers seeking authentic pieces, from Eames loungers to a Pierre Cardin-designed chess set.
Newman and his wife opened the store 13 years ago, when the north end of Palm Canyon was considered the boonies of Palm Springs retail. But they liked the area's architecture and small town feel, and sensed that midcentury style was priming for a comeback.
“Midcentury was the first design aesthetic to come out of Palm Springs. There was one article — the Rosetta stone — in Vanity Fair in 1999,” he recalled, referring to a piece showcasing some of Palm Springs' midcentury houses. “We had the first meeting of the Palm Springs Modernism Committee in our store, and it was like five people.”
The Modernism Show, the weekend-long precursor to Modernism Week, launched in 2001. The revival drew more home buyers to the city, which in turn created a market for furniture and home wares, both modernist and midcentury-compatible, he said.
Dwight Polen and Tony Larcombe opened their Asian antique store — named for Polen — in 2000. While in the beginning the shop catered mostly to designers, the past five years have seen more homeowners coming in, looking for accents to the midcentury cool of their interiors, Larcombe said.
“Antique Chinese furniture will fit with any kind of décor,” he said. “An altar table with a nice lamp warms up the whole place.”
Designer Trina Turk arrived in 2002, adding her “California chic” fashion to the street, but most people agree the tipping point came several years later when the restaurants started moving in — Cheeky's, Jake's, Trio and Birba.
“That really helped promote the area,” Larcombe said. “A lot of people visit us and shop us from La Quinta. They would come here in the morning, they eat lunch, they stay; they don't go anywhere else.”
Tony Marchese, co-owner of Trio, said when he and executive chef Mark Van Laanen opened the restaurant in 2009, they chose its location for the neighborhood's architecture and walkability. Picking a midcentury color scheme for the eatery was coincidental — “Orange is a good energy color,” he said — putting the words “Uptown Design District” on its billboards and advertising was not.
The first efforts to turn the area's informal moniker into a brand started about two years ago, Marchese said. Plans to host a party for hotel concierges led to a glossy, purse-sized shopping guide, website and eventually the distinctive Uptown banners that now hang on streetlights.
Larry Abel, co-owner of ASI — Art Style Innovation, was the main mover on the branding campaign, talking up the idea to other shops on the street and forming a core group.
One reason the campaign got broad buy-in, he said, is because most of the shops are locally owned.
“If you go in, you see the owners. It's their heart and their designs,” he said.
Branding the district has made it an easy sell for tourists, said Mary Jo Ginther, director of tourism at the Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism.
“When people come to Palm Springs, they love the Palm Canyon experience, and increasingly, they come to find that midcentury vibe,” she said. “It's a great way of taking what Modernism Week started and offering that end product. It's a positive thing; it's intrinsically fun.”
K Kaufmann can be reached at k.kaufmann@thedesertsun.com or (760) 778-4622.
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