ATTACHMENT E
(Public Comments)
Palm Springs City Council
3200 East Tahquitz Canyon Way
Palm Springs, California 92262
July 7, 2026
Dear Council Members,
When I first became friends with Albert Frey in 1994 one of the first things he asked me to do was to walk down the road and meet Bill and Clara Burgess and see his designs there.
It was a revelation visiting that Burgess house for the first time. I’ll never forget it. The combination of the site, the stonework (designed by Frey and constructed over a 15 year period by mason Olav Engum), the original classic MidCentury Modern house by Hugh Kaptur, the signature parabolic sunshades by Frey scattered around the site, the innovative mirrored Pavilion Guest House by Frey, the gigantic boulder in the living room, the collectible furniture, and not to mention the very stylish paisley-wearing Bill Burgess and Pucci-wearing Clara. Their wild children showed me how to jump off the roof into the pool; among things I shouldn’t reveal. It was like I had entered a special unique “we’re not in Kansas anymore” insular Palm Springs world on steroids. When pressed for a description all I could say was it was like a fever dream combination of Palm Springs and Acapulco …with an endless open bar.
It had everything I loved—a spectacular view, great architecture, great design, and tons of style.
It was one the most Palm Springs-y houses I had ever seen. It is unusual that two architects, Kaptur and Frey, collaborated with such seamless aplomb and success; each adding to the legacy and overall significance of the property.
Frey’s own half-inside half-outside boulder is now world famous, but he showcased another large one at the Burgess house when he expanded the living room. Frey also strategically placed another huge boulder in the Russell swimming pool next door that he, Frey, also designed.
It is a cliché that midcentury architecture wanted to blend the indoors and outdoors---no one did this with more drama, confidence and theatricality than Frey. Welcome to the neighborhood---a big Frey-placed boulder for every house on the block.
Now the Burgess house has passed to new stewards and with their love and dedication the property has been restored with great respect to the architecture, history and design in every way.
With Ronnie Sassoon & James Crump’s recent restoration and remodel, and their esteemed art and furniture collection, the house is more serious and more stylish than ever. It can now compete with any house on an international level. It is honestly, in my opinion, one of the best and most significant houses and sites in Palm Springs.
Thank you.
Brad Dunning
Mark Ostoich
660 Palisades Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92262
City Council of Palm Springs
3200 East Tahquitz Canyon Way
Palm Springs, CA
July 7, 2026
Dear Council Members,
My name is Mark Ostoich and my wife Liz and I live at 660 Palisades Drive, next door to the Burgess House. We have lived there for a number of years and the Meyermans were dear friends of ours. We were so happy when Ronnie and James bought the house and moved in because they are wonderful people. We’re very familiar with the house and very familiar with the property and they are both outstanding. I agree with Brad Dunning that Ronnie and James have done a fantastic job of returning that house to its original vision. We strongly support the application. By the way, we have a very small neighborhood and we are all in favor.
Regards,
Mark and Liz Ostoich
SHEATHED IN MIRRORED
GLASS, ALBERT FREY’S
VAULTED GUESTHOUSE
MAKES A DISTINCT
BUT COMPANIONABLE
COLLEAGUE TO THE
FLAT-ROOFED MAIN
RESIDENCE BELOW.
OPPOSITE AN ALEXANDER
CALDER SCULPTURE
CROWNS THE FIREPLACE,
WITH AN ÉTIENNE HAJDÚ
CAST-ALUMINUM WALL
RELIEF INSTALLED JUST
BEYOND. FURNISHINGS
INCLUDE A MARC NEWSON
COCKTAIL TABLE AND A
VINTAGE JEAN PROUVÉ
DAYBED AND CHAIR.
Rock Star
TEXT BY MAYER RUS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS LOOF
HUGGING THE SAN JACINTO MOUNTAINS,
A CLASSIC PALM SPRINGS HOUSE BY
ARCHITECTS HUGH KAPTUR AND ALBERT
FREY COMES ALIVE UNDER THE STEWARDSHIP
OF RONNIE SASSOON AND JAMES CRUMP
ARCHDIGEST.COM 125
ART: ALEXANDER CALDER © 2026 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. ETIENNE HAJDU © 2025 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS.
ARCHDIGEST.COM 127126 ARCHDIGEST.COM
The Burgess House has never
belonged to the elite frater -
nity of architectural mar -
vels synonymous with the
efflorescence of midcentury
modernism in Palm Springs—
places like Richard Neutra’s
Kaufmann House, E. Stewart
Williams’s Twin Palms estate
for Frank Sinatra, and Albert Frey’s own landmark residence, Frey House II. Obscured by a convoluted history of renova - tions and expansions spanning many decades—as well as
an owner who was loathe to share credit with his architects, Hugh Kaptur and Albert Frey—the Burgess House has existed in a fog of improper attribution and appreciation, a condition exacerbated by the tumbling banks of bougainvillea that for years shrouded the structure’s archetypal modernist forms.
Ronnie Sassoon and James Crump, the home’s current stew - ards, mean to change all that.
The house could not have fallen into more sympathetic hands.
Sassoon, an inveterate collector and art historian as well as an accomplished designer in her
own right, famously shep -
herded the renovation of
Neutra’s Singleton House in
Los Angeles (AD, April 2011),
where she lived with her late
husband, legendary taste -
maker Vidal Sassoon. Crump,
a documentary filmmaker
and curator equally steeped in the history of modern design, has trained his lens on a host of artists and architects, among them Marcel Breuer, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff, and Jordan Wolfson. In 2013, the couple moved into Neutra’s Levit House in LA, followed by the acquisition of Breuer’s 1966 Stillman House II in Connecticut a few years later.
“We’d go to Palm Springs a few times a year, but we were certainly not looking to get a house there. I never thought we’d leave our Neutra in LA,” Sassoon says, recounting the decision to trade their spruce hideaway for a desert oasis. During a tour of Frey House II on one of their sojourns, Sassoon and Crump caught a glimpse of the Burgess House in the near distance on
ABOVE CHAIRS BY AFRA AND TOBIA SCARPA PULL UP TO A GLASS SHELF BUILT INTO A BOULDER IN THE GUEST QUARTERS. TOP PALM TREES REFLECTED IN THE MIRRORED GLASS SKIN OF THE GUESTHOUSE.
T
A JEAN PROUVÉ BED JOINS
A WOOD SCREEN AND METAL
SCONCES BY CHARLOTTE
PERRIAND IN THE SUNROOM.
JUST OUTSIDE, WATER
CASCADES DOWN THE
ROCK FACE INTO A KOI POND.
128 ARCHDIGEST.COM
the same mountainside, and their antennae for great architecture immediately shot up. Sited atop a rugged stone embankment on a flat shelf dynamited from the rock face, the structure gives the impression of a modern domestic utopia perched atop a medieval rampart. Years later, when they were again in town to see a Frey exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center, they heard that the Burgess House was going on the market and immediately made arrangements to see it. “We couldn’t get this place out of our mind,” Sassoon recalls. “The house just drew us to it,” Crump affirms.
As one might expect, a deep dive into historical research ensued. The kernel of the house—a modest, 1,200-square-foot post-and-beam cottage, with a flat roof, glass cur- tain walls, and deep cantilevered eaves—was designed in 1957 by Hugh Kaptur, not yet a licensed architect at the time. Roughly 10 years later, Albert Frey expanded the structure in a language consistent with Kaptur’s original scheme. Frey continued to enlarge the house in the decades that followed, adding signature details like the ABOVE THE LIVING ROOM’S
ENSEMBLE OF ARTWORKS AND
FURNISHINGS ENCOMPASSES
A LAWRENCE WEINER TEXT
PIECE ON A CEILING BEAM, AN
ALEXANDER CALDER SCULPTURE
ABOVE THE FIREPLACE, A LUCIO
FONTANA TERRA-COTTA FLOOR
SCULPTURE, AN ALEXANDRE
NOLL WOOD CABINET, VERNER
PANTON HANGING CHAIR
PROTOTYPES, A JEAN PROUVÉ
DAYBED AND CHAIRS, A MARC
NEWSON MARBLE TABLE, AND
MODULAR MARIO BELLINI
SEATING FLANKING A VICO
MAGISTRETTI COCKTAIL TABLE.
ABOVE THE HOUSE RESTS ON A STONE RAMPART WITH AN ARCHED BALUSTRADE ADDED BY FREY IN 1968. BELOW THE SHIPSHAPE
STAINLESS-STEEL KITCHEN, INCLUDING A CAMOUFLAGED DOOR
TO THE PRIMARY BEDROOM THAT READS AS AN APPLIANCE, WAS
DESIGNED BY SASSOON AND EXECUTED BY MARMOL RADZINER.
TABLE AND STOOLS BY CHARLOTTE PERRIAND.
arched balustrade he placed atop the stone embank -
ment, which frames the property’s generous patios
and exterior walkways. The arch motif reappears
in vaulted shade structures of stretched canvas that
Frey built in 1980, and most dramatically, in the guest pavilion he designed in 1989.
Built on an escarpment above the main residence,
the guesthouse features a barrel-vaulted roof and a
skin of mirrored glass that dematerializes the com -
pact structure in a series of shimmering reflections of mountains, palm trees, and clouds. As in Frey House
II—as well as in his expansion of the Burgess House’s
living room—Frey incorporated massive boulders
into the interior of the pavilion, making explicit
ART: ALEXANDER CALDER © 2026 CALDER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK. ETIENNE HAJDU © 2026 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS. LUCIO FONTANA © 2026 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / SIAE, ROME. PINO PASCALI.
LAWRENCE WEINER © 2026 LAWRENCE WEINER ESTATE / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK.
ARCHDIGEST.COM 131130 ARCHDIGEST.COM
the indoor-outdoor connection. “The boulders channel the energy of the mountain directly into the home,” Sassoon notes.
Sassoon’s exhaustive renovation of the property might best be described as a distillation, clarifying architectural details and banishing inapposite elements to lay bare the structure as a Platonic ideal of Palm Springs mod - ernism. Working closely with the design-build firm Studio Veren to execute her vision, she liberated the structures from their cumbersome cloak of bougainvillea, replaced scores of ornamental outdoor urns with architec - tonic cacti, and dislodged defunct mechanicals on the roof of the primary residence. While the existing floor plans remained essentially unchanged, Sassoon designed a tightly tailored, stainless-steel kitchen for the main house to indulge her passion for cooking.
Her predictably minimal decorative scheme embraces objets de vertu drawn from her estimable collection—signature pieces by the likes of Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, and Alexandre Noll—along with artworks that reflect Sassoon’s abiding interest in the Zero group and Arte Povera movement. “With an open plan, you’re looking at everything all at once, so it has to work together,” she avers. “The boulders require you to use furniture of a certain scale and weight—nothing dainty.”
The restraint of the decor ultimately privileges the newly liberated archi- tecture and the astonishing vistas. Crump describes the home’s allure in cin- ematic terms. “You have uninterrupted sight lines across the Coachella Valley framed in a wide-screen ratio,” he raves. “During the day everything is bathed in this clean, crystalline desert light, with colors and shadow effects chang - ing constantly. At night, you look out across a carpet of sparkling city lights.” Today, after much care, the view back to the house is pretty spectacular, too.
ABOVE THE PRIMARY BEDROOM IS OUTFITTED WITH THE ORIGINAL FREY-DESIGNED BED, A SERGE MOUILLE SCONCE, A GIANFRANCO FRATTINI CHAIR, A MATHIEU MATÉGOT MAGAZINE HOLDER, AND A CHARLOTTE PERRIAND BENCH. PAINTING BY ITALIAN ARTIST DADAMAINO.
IN HIS ADDITIONS
TO THE HOUSE, FREY
EXTENDED THE DEEP
CANTILEVERED EAVES
THAT WERE A DEFINING
FEATURE OF KAPTUR’S
ORIGINAL DESIGN.
LOOP AND POD CHAIRS
BY WILLY GUHL.
ABOVE RONNIE SASSOON AND JAMES CRUMP
WITH MONKEY THE DOG ON A SOFA BY UBALD
KLUG FOR DE SEDE IN THE SCREENING AREA
OF THE LIVING ROOM. A PINO PASCALI STEEL
WOOL SCULPTURE HANGS FROM THE CEILING.
ART: MATHIEU MATÉGOT © 2025 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ADAGP, PARIS