Inside a Mid-Century Masterpiece in the California Desert
“The place is full of reference to the club’s eponym, but I drew the line at the more obvious (I think). It’s not surprising it’s called Marrakesh. The air, topography, and vegetation are very much the same.” —Tom Scheerer
We all have dreams. Imagine if, like Robert Evans, Sue Mengers, and Myrna Loy, you could live in a house designed by the master of the Hollywood Regency style, John Elgin Woolf. Sound good? Now imagine living in a whole town by Woolf. This is possible, with a little respect for what defines great architecture and a tolerance for dry heat (which Frank Sinatra loved).
We’re talking about Palm Desert, California, and Woolf’s last project, which he began there in 1968: the 155-acre Marrakesh Country Club. The area is known for its more conventional strands of modernism—disciplined Midcentury, Lautner spaceship, etc.—right up to the 1980s Mayan waterfall–themed gate of the Vintage Country Club across the street. But this is something else altogether. This is a dream.
Living on a golf course is nothing new today, but it was the invention of Johnny Dawson, a champion golfer who became a developer. His 1949 conversion of the Thunderbird dude ranch in Rancho Mirage to the Thunderbird Country Club changed the course of American leisure living, and Dawson’s timing couldn’t have been better. Air conditioning had recently become accessible, and, with war in the rearview mirror, Americans with money in their pockets were looking for new ways to play. From the day it opened, Thunderbird had so much cachet that in 1956 Ford named its new car after it (true story). After another success at the Seven Lakes Country Club in Palm Springs, in 1967 Dawson began the Marrakesh project. As is usual in these stories, success lay in hiring the right architect.
The work of John Woolf had been defining the good life in Hollywood since 1942, with the completion of his Pendleton house (the one that became home to Robert Evans; you know it from pictures of Evans working two phones by the oval pool). For Marrakesh he made a modernist clubhouse, its entry approach sited on a dramatic rise, with the mountains as a backdrop and an ascending ribbon water feature inspired by Islamic gardens.
Then there are the 364 houses—four types, each designated by letter and sometimes repeated in mirror fashion, with courtyards, white mansard roofs, and the signature Woolf entrance of attenuated double doors. The effect: a miniature Pendleton house for everyone, a city of Trianons for I Dream of Jeannie if Jeannie left her bottle and asked Major Nelson to build her a home.
No less striking than the houses here are the ancillary structures, all of which wear the signature Marrakesh pink, from the turreted gate kiosk flanked by obelisks to the serpentine wall to the 14 separate communal pools, each with a pavilion of a different design. (Woolf loved a poolhouse; his first commission was one for Fanny Brice.) He also designed the streetlamps, which look like something from Hello, Dolly!.
With life in the desert in (and then increasingly out of) fashion, there things sat for a while. If you knew, you knew.
Enter the dean of traditional American decorators, Tom Scheerer. Scheerer is known principally for his houses. Since redoing the Lyford Cay Club in the Bahamas, however, he has quietly made a name for himself as the go-to guy to make a country club chic again. To do this, he channels respect for the DNA of a place while finding design solutions that endow it with fresh possibilities, a thing not easily done in communities where stakeholders are entitled to have an opinion—and do.
Scheerer was brought to Marrakesh by Stephen Drucker, former editor in chief of Town & Country and a friend. Scheerer’s redecoration of the clubhouse here balances the past with a certain crisp energy emanating from his signature palette of moss green and white. There are surprises and departures, and nothing is too themey.
A wall of photos at the entrance celebrates the founding crowd, but once inside one moves through spaces oozing quiet glamour and a sense of refinement not easy to find in this part of the world. There is a curved hall with grisaille muralistic wallpaper leading to the bar. There are mirrored walls to double the view and, instead of the expected cornice, a lambrequin in this bar. There is a men’s locker room with backgammon always set up and ready, and oversize bottles of 4711, said to be JFK’s favorite cologne.
Marrakesh was always about fantasy, and there is no less of that now, but Scheerer’s touch puts this clubhouse two steps further from Vegas and squarely in very sophisticated territory.
Drucker joined the club in 2015. He has owned two houses here; having started in a type B, he now lives in a D. At 2,465 square feet, with three bedrooms, 10-foot ceilings, and windows everywhere, it really could be a Mediterranean villa. He has returned it to its original state of finish, with a kitchen full of intentionally basic white appliances and $150 glass shower doors from Home Depot. But upgrades include a continuous terrazzo floor throughout, which keeps things cool and bounces light off the white walls. One of his only alterations has been to convert a planter in the entrance courtyard into a fountain—the sound of water is now always nearby.
Why does Drucker choose to be here? For the same reason Hollywood Regency–style houses are sought by movie stars, and Melrose Place is the most fashionable enclave of shops in L.A.: architecture by Woolf. Marrakesh has a quality of form that has never been diluted since the day it opened its doors. It’s young enough never to have been messed with, and the members know what they have. In a world that values a certain generic definition of luxury, it has also remained relatively undiscovered.
“There aren’t many places left where you can live in an absolutely world class piece of architecture for a million dollars,” says Drucker. Then, with a smile, he adds, “For now.”
For the Purist
$745K, 47212 Marrakesh Drive, Palm Desert
There are still a few John Woolf homes for sale at the Marrakesh Club. While you can’t put a price on the cachet of living in an architectural gem, under a mil is a fabulous place to start. marrakeshrealestate.com
For the Hard-Partying Tech Bro
$12.9M, 255 Palowet Drive, #303, Palm Desert
An eight-figure price tag isn’t a bargain for most, but it might be for a Silicon Valley titan in need of a crash pad for next year’s Power Trip, the heavy metal Coachella for the one percent. compass.com
For the Low-Key Rich Witch
$5.1M, 38894 Trinidad Circle, Palm Springs
Twenty-eight solar panels. A firepit and spa. Flourishing cacti in the courtyard. Spreads in shelter mags. If these won’t lure Loro Piana–swaddled members of the woo-woo set, what will? sothebysrealty.com
This story appears in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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