Dome

Raking view looking north on S. Palm Canyon Dr.; The J.W. Robinson department store first opened in Los Angeles in 1883 (as the "Boston Dry Goods Store"). It eventually grew into a California chain with 30 stores. (The chain was bought out and closed by 1991.) Two stores, in Pasadena and Palm Springs, opened in Robinson’s 75th anniversary year of 1958. The Palm Springs store was a tiny jewel set in the desert, with a hovering folded-plate roof, clerestory windows, and extensive use of glass curtain wall. The relatively small Palm Springs Robinson’s (which was preceded by a small boutique Robinson’s store on the grounds of the Desert Inn) was intended to be an “open in winter only" store. A 1972 addition added 13,400 square feet. The roof is a series of light steel trusses linked in a serrated pattern, and set on lean pipe columns. Nowhere does this roof rest on walls, even at the solid masonry rear of the store. The walls are faced with a special tile of marble and quartz aggregate, patterned in a horizontal diamond to repeat the rhythm of the gold anodized aluminum fascia (now painted over). Source: Palm Springs Preservation Foundation; http://www.pspreservationfoundation.org/ (accessed 8/15/2015)