E. Stewart Williams

Emerson Stewart Williams, FAIA (1909–September 10 2005) was a prolific Palm Springs, California-based architect whose distinctive modernist style buildings significantly shaped the Coachella Valley's architectural landscape.

E. Stewart Williams's father, Harry Williams, was a well-respected architect originally based in Dayton, Ohio best known for designing the offices of National Cash Register (NCR). In 1934 Julia Carnell, whose husband was the comptroller of NCR, decided that a commercial development in Palm Springs, where she wintered, would be a good investment and brought Harry Williams to Palm Springs to design the historic La Plaza Shopping Center. Harry Williams stayed on in the city afterward, opening his own architectural practice, which was later joined by E. Stewart's younger brother, Roger, also an architect.

Williams completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University in 1932 and was elected to the Sphinx Head Society. Williams then taught at Columbia University from 1934 to 1938. In 1938 Williams traveled through northern Europe and he met and married a Swedish woman on the trip. Upon returning he worked in Raymond Loewy's office. In Loewy's office Williams' responsibilities included projects for the 1939 New York World's Fair, and the Lord and Taylor department store in Manhasset, Long Island in 1941, one of the first large suburban department stores to be built.

In 1941 Williams began working in his father's Dayton office on defense-related projects. By 1943 Williams was involved in the building of ships at the Bechtel Marin facility in Sausalito followed by a stint at Mare Island with the Navy.

In 1946 Williams joined his father and brother in their Palm Springs practice, forming Williams, Williams, & Williams. Williams's first residential commission was a house for Frank Sinatra. Williams says that on May 1 1947 Sinatra wandered into their office eating an ice cream cone and stating that he wanted a house built by Christmas, meaning Williams had roughly only three months to design it and another three months to build it. Sinatra's other requirement was that it be a Georgian-style mansion, a style neither aesthetically nor functionally suited to the desert.

Williams ended up presenting Sinatra two designs, one in the style he requested, and the other a low-lying, modern design, well integrated into the surrounding landscape and functionally appropriate to the climate. Luckily for all Sinatra chose the latter.

Though a relatively conservative design in comparison to the works of other notable architects then building in the area, particularly Richard Neutra and Albert Frey, the house would become an architectural trend-setter (being the first "shed roof" house in the desert) and serve as model of "hipness" in the desert community, thought this was perhaps as much due to its occupant as to its design. Roger Williams in a much later interview spoke about Sinatra's final choice of a modern design: "I'm so glad. We'd (Williams, Williams, & Williams) have been ruined if we'd been forced to build Georgian in the desert."

What followed were an unbroken string of commissions, large and small, institutional and private, commercial and residential that made the practice of Williams, Williams, & Williams, and in particular E. Stewart Williams, one those most fecund practices and architects in the region. Williams' father died in 1957, and John Porter Clark joined the practice in the 1960s.

Among those significant commissions was one for a house for the Seattle hotel owners William and Marjorie Edris. Having purchased a large lot, the Edris' commissioned Williams as both the architect and the contractor for the job. Williams' design was more sophisticated and integrated into its desert surroundings than the earlier Sinatra house. The Edris House, as it is now known, remains largely unchanged, containing many of the original Williams' designed fixtures and details, and is protected from alteration by being designated a historic building by the Palm Springs City Council in 2004.

ignificant Buildings

* 1946 Potter Building - Palm Springs, California
* 1947 Sinatra House - Palm Springs, California
* 1949 The Colony: A Studio Apartment Group - Palm Springs, California (Architectural Record, Nov. 1949, pp. 124-129)
* 1952 Oasis Building - Palm Springs, California
* 1954 Edris House - Palm Springs, California
* 1955 Coachella Savings and Loan (I) - Palm Springs, California
* 1956 Williams House - Palm Springs, California, Los Angeles Examiner Pictorial Living Magazine, March 22, 1959, pp. 10-11.
* 1960 Santa Fe Savings and Loan - Palm Springs, California
* 1961 Mountaintop Station, Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, Palm Springs, California
* 1961 Coachella Savings and Loan (II) - Palm Springs, California
* 1972 Crafton Hills College - Yucaipa, California
* 1976 Palm Springs Desert Museum - Palm Springs, California

Additional reading

* "Palm Sprins Modern" by Adele Cygelman. 1999. Rizzoli International Press. 191 pages
* "Once Upon a Time in the West" by Andrea Truppin. Modernism magazine. Spring 2005 issue
* "Palm Springs Weekend" by Alan Hess and Andrew Danish. 2001. Chronicle Books. 180 pages

External links

* [http://www.psmodcom.com/Architects%20Pages/Stewart%20Williams.html E. Stewart Williams bio and photos] - The Palm Springs Modern Committee website