“Jill Kitnick, who turns 70 this month, is walking Luna, her black poodle, down a quiet Santa Barbara street when I call, catching her off-guard. Has she heard, I ask her, what’s happened to her old family home in Palm Springs? “Oh, dear,” she says. “Now what?”
The home we’re talking about isn’t just any house in Palm Springs. It’s the architectural equivalent of Steve McQueen’s 1968 Mustang GT — the car he drove through the streets of San Francisco at over 100 miles per hour in the action-thriller Bullitt. It’s a Beatles mop-top haircut, the Givenchy-designed little black dress Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a one-of-a-kind Le Corbusier chaise lounge covered in cowskin leather. In short, it’s iconic…”
