Cornelia White House at the Village Green GRANT
The Cornelia White House was built in 1893 and is made entirely of “recycled” railroad ties taken from the Palmdale Railroad (a horse-drawn narrow gauge short-line railroad that ran along Palm Springs’ present-day Farrell Drive to the proposed town site of Palmdale near the foot of Mount San Jacinto). The residence is named for its original owner, Cornelia B. White, who was an important early pioneer of the Palm Springs area.
PSPF premiered a 20-minute film entitled “The Restoration and Stabilization of the Cornelia White Residence” during Modernism Week Virtual Fall Preview 2020 and again during Modernism Week in April 2021. Watch the Film
In an October 4, 2018 letter from the city of Palm Springs, the city’s Director of Planning Services acknowledged PSPF’s financial support of the video project. To read the city’s letter click here.
During the summer of 2018, the city of Palm Springs embarked on a “board-by-board” restoration of the historic Cornelia White House (located on the 200 block of South Palm Canyon Drive). As part of the effort, the city will document the progress of the restoration with a photographic time-lapse video. To partially assist in this laudable effort, the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation has granted $6,300 to the city of Palm Springs with the understanding that the resulting video documentation will be made publicly available. It is expected that the video will not only serve as a record of this historic preservation effort, but will also aid historians interested in the history of early Palm Springs.
