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The first 30 feet of Fairway Drive run between six-foot hedges before halting at an iron gate. Visitors who activate the callbox are asked to identify themselves and the residence to which they are traveling. If the visitor has been invited by someone behind the gate, the iron bars swing open with a soft, slow hum revealing an empty landscape of lush, green, uninterrupted curves intersected twice by winding asphalt golf-cart paths. Welcome to the Tamarisk Country Club, Rancho Mirage, California.

After the gate, Fairway Drive crosses the fairway separating Tamarisk’s 12th and 13th holes, splits the hedges separating two large homes, and forks. To the left, at the end of a cul-de-sac, is a striking palazzo of sharp geometries. But to the right, the clean aesthetic deteriorates. Behind a chain-link fence covered in combat-green plastic is a single-acre lot where utility connections, desert scrub, and shattered tree stumps poke through sand. At the property’s edge, almost lost in the drooping flowers of an overgrown hedge, is a modest metal mailbox. Behind it, written in an elegant modernist typeface attached to a darkened wood plank, is a name and address: S.H. Maslon 70-900 Fairway Drive.

It looks like a headstone, and in many ways, it is one.


Samuel H. Maslon was born in 1901 to the owner of a Jewish grocery on the north side of Minneapolis. Although a quiet young man, his brilliance drew attention: When it came time for him to attend law school, the Jewish community raised the funds to pay his tuition at Harvard. After graduating first in his class, Maslon moved to Washington, D.C. and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Soon after, he returned to Minneapolis and founded the Minneapolis law firm today known as Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand.

Of those who noticed Maslon’s ascent, none was more important to him than Luella Rykoff, the ninth child of a well-off Los Angeles grocery wholesaler. Their first date took place while Sam was on business in Los Angeles, and was arranged by a Maslon law partner’s wife who happened to be related to Luella. Sam made an excellent impression: Luella broke off an engagement to another man and became engaged to Sam—after that first date. Later, as Luella Maslon, she astonished her relatives and moved to the “wilds of Minnesota.”

Luella Maslon grew to love Minneapolis. She raised her children in the city, and she became an important figure in its cultural life. Luella was particularly interested in the visual arts, and so she became a docent at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Not long afterward she and Sam began acquiring an important collection of their own. Years later, Sam Maslon would recall, “Soon we found ourselves in the world art market—looking for works of art in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Zurich, Israel—and suddenly we realized that something great had come into our lives.” Edith Nadler, a lifelong friend in both Minneapolis and California, recalls that, “She wasn’t just a collector, she was a teacher. She suggested that I become a docent at the Institute. She imbued people with a love of art.”

Luella’s family remained in California, and so she and Sam would travel there for extended vacations with their children in Palm Springs, a few hours from Los Angeles. Janice Lyle, the director of the Palm Springs Desert Museum, credits Luella with being one of a small group of people who transformed Palm Springs into a destination that was “not just for golf and tennis. This became a place for cultural experiences.”

Sam Maslon served as a trustee at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Luella served as a trustee at the Palm Springs Desert Museum (she also chaired that museum’s Art Committee, guiding its acquisition of contemporary artworks). Their impact on both institutions was profound and long-standing, embodied only in part by the 19th and 20th century masterpieces given to each.In the early 1950s, Sam and Luella were among the founders of the Tamarisk Country Club in unincorporated Rancho Mirage, just five miles down the highway from downtown Palm Springs. In an era of rapid golf-club development, Tamarisk was an important landmark: It was founded with a specifically Jewish membership list. In the process, the Maslons acquired one of the only full-acre residential lots on the course (two half-acre lots for $1,200 each).

The 1950s and 1960s were an exciting time for architecture in Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley. “People with wealth who could afford interesting architects were arriving,” explains Janice Lyle. Luella Maslon could not only afford an interesting architect, but she had the taste and background necessary to choose and work with the very best. “In the end, there was no choice but Neutra,” claims Maslon’s daughter-in-law, Laura Maslon.

Born in 1892 to an Austrian Jewish family, Richard Neutra was an intellectually formidable young man. He studied architecture in the presence of Europe’s first great modernists, and his early work was influenced by their spare structures. In 1914, he and his contemporaries were astounded by the European publication of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. For Neutra it was an event that would lead him to America, and ten years later, a place at Wright’s celebrated arts colony Taliesin.

Under Wright, Neutra’s harsh European modernism became organic. “Nature was supposed to be the prominent visual feature in his houses,” Barbara Lamprecht, a leading Neutra scholar, explains. “He would invoke that.” A signature post-and-beam construction developed to allow nature into structures, an approach particularly suited to temperate, light-filled Southern California. At the time, Neutra’s most celebrated buildings were built in and around Los Angeles.

As with many artists and their wealthy patrons, the relationship between Neutra and Luella was difficult. They fought over everything: the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and their positions within the house; barbecues and kitchens, golf-cart doorways and plumbing walls; hardware and landscaping. Perhaps the most contentious issue was the intended placement of Luella’s growing art collection. According to Sam and Luella’s son, James, “He thought the house was so beautiful that he didn’t want any art in it.” The unpublished correspondence between client and architect reveals the tension: “I reviewed your contract which follows our form and has a legalistic flair which I, of course, am in no position to judge, I am only an architect.” Although in almost all aspects of her life Luella got what she wanted, Neutra’s rigidity tended to win out in the design of the house.

The result was a 5,000-square-foot U-shaped structure, completed in 1962, which Barbara Lamprecht describes as a floating pavilion. “It showed incredible mastery of its site, that carpet of green.” Within the U was a pool and patio that flowed into the glass. The “social room” was ideal for Luella’s entertaining (replete with indoor barbecue), and the small bedrooms forced guests into the communal life of the house. Despite Neutra’s minimalist intentions, the house’s long interior walls were ideal for the display of the paintings that were Luella’s passion. “I really do believe that it’s one of the very best jobs we have done,” Neutra wrote to his clients at the end of the design.

Luella and Sam loved the house, and they loved sharing it with others. Alex Kaiser, Luella’s Rancho Mirage house manager of 24 years, describes her as “a party girl” (Kaiser met Luella when she was in her early 70s). Dr. Henry Jaffe, a Palm Springs friend for 50 years, remembers her as “a wonderful hostess. If you were in her living room after dinner, she made sure that you talked. She would call on people if they were quiet.” Over the years, that living room would host a range of luminaries, from U.S. senators to ‘Dear Abby,’ pro wrestlers to Walter and Leonore Annenberg. “She was the dowager of Palm Springs,” Kaiser sighs.

Samuel Maslon died in 1988, and Luella Maslon lived a vigorous 13 years after him. She loved art and museums, and the museums loved her. In large part, the reciprocation was based on a growing recognition that aging Luella Maslon had an incomparable collection of contemporary art. “She was courted,” Laura Maslon recalls. But the courting was useless: Those parts of the collection not willed to the estate had been long since willed to museums. (The Minneapolis Institute of Arts waited decades for extraordinary paintings by Modigliani and Leger.) As for the house, the family agrees that Luella always expected it to be sold after her death. When asked whether the family had considered other options, such as donating it to a museum, Enid Maslon Starr, the Maslon’s surviving daughter, sighs. “There was never any discussion about it.” Janice Lyle, when asked whether the nearby Palm Spring Desert Museum would have accepted the house as a gift, leans forward with her answer. “Yes.”

Luella Maslon died in July 2001.Eight months later, not long after the house had been sold and cleared escrow, Alex Kaiser dropped by to check if there was any mail for the family. As he drove Fairway Drive, he was surprised to see the gate open, and as he turned into the cul-de-sac, he was shocked to see the concrete in front of the house being torn up. The next morning Edith Nadler was startled by a crash that she thought was an earthquake. When she ran outside, “I saw they were demolishing the house. I was just so shocked. I started crying.” The next day Leslie Enders, a Maslon family friend, was playing golf on the Tamarisk course. “And when I came to the twelfth hole, it was all gone.” She rushed home and called Jim and Laura Maslon. Jim and Laura called Enid. “They couldn’t get over it,” Enders recalls. “They kept saying, ‘He promised, he promised.’”

Word spread quickly through the Coachella Valley arts community. Janice Lyle recalls hearing the news from Edith Nadler and replying, “That can’t be right, Edie. You must be mistaken. Nobody would do something like that.” Pete Moruzzi, chair of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, a group devoted to the preservation of mid-century architecture in the Coachella Valley, received the news in L.A. “I freaked out, but I was skeptical. I mean, why would anyone tear down a $2.5 million house? So I had a friend go over and sure enough.”

Dr. Jaffe heard about it several days later. “I remember picking up a copy of the L.A. Times and seeing it there. I mean, you have to be sick to do something like that.” Sick or not, someone named “Richard Roitenberg” [sic] was listed on the March 19, 2002 demolition permit as the owner of 70-900 Fairway Drive. And despite the best attempts of some of the world’s most distinguished newspapers, Richard Rotenberg wasn’t talking.


Like Samuel Maslon, Richard Rotenberg is a native of the Minneapolis Jewish community, and like Maslon, he left Minneapolis to attend law school. But Richard Rotenberg didn’t go to Harvard, and he didn’t finish his law degree. Instead, he became a successful developer in Southern California who, by 1990, had acquired the financial means to purchase a house on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. By the mid-1990s he was building upscale residential subdivisions in the Twin Cities suburbs.

Over the years, Rotenberg has made a habit of clearing and subdividing. His Emerald Ridge development is cut into the woods of Minnetonka (Rotenberg owns a suburban manor in that development, complete with three full-sized brass deer in the front yard). He also likes to renovate; after buying his Beverly Hills home, he took out renovation permits for tens of thousands of dollars worth of work (including the installation of a urinal not far from an expanded “breakfast room”).

Richard Rotenberg won’t talk about himself, and those who know him won’t talk about him either. Nonetheless, it is clear that Rotenberg is quite proud of his Beverly Hills residence. The Star Tribune reports that he once stood up at a Minnetonka City Council meeting and introduced himself as “Richard Rotenberg, Beverly Hills, 90210.” Yet there is some evidence that some of his neighbors do not take a similar pride in Rotenberg. In a chance encounter with a photographer in front of that Beverly Hills residence, one neighbor sniffed, “Let him know that nobody around here is impressed by that Porsche he always leaves in his front yard. It’s Beverly Hills, for chrissakes.”

Richard Rotenberg could afford the $2.45 million that the Maslons were asking for the house. “That was $850,000 over the appraised value,” James Maslon explains. “We just figured that anybody who would pay that premium would be interested in preserving it.” In the end, Richard Rotenberg was the only serious buyer, though it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Laura Maslon recalls that “we had all these people” over the years who had offered to buy the house, if Luella ever decided to sell it. But by the time the house was offered “many of them had died, and many just didn’t come forward.”Deirdre Coit represented the Maslons in the sale. She has never met Richard Rotenberg, but she met his real estate agent. “And his agent represented that they loved the house and they wanted to renovate it.” Enid Maslon Starr kept in contact with Coit from Boston. “I spoke with the broker on several occasions, and she told me that he [Rotenberg] was asking about restoration contractors.”

None of the Maslons has ever met Richard Rotenberg. However, prior to the closing of escrow, James Maslon spoke with him by phone and indicated that he would leave several Neutra-related items for him at the house. Shortly after the closing, Rotenberg called on Edith Nadler, the longtime Maslon friend and Tamarisk member who lived next door on Fairway Drive. “He said he’d bought the house and wanted to introduce himself. I said the house needed a little help, and he agreed.” She pauses. “Was he going to renovate? He implied it by everything he said.” Before leaving Mrs. Nadler, Rotenberg also asked for a favor. “He asked me, ‘Do you think I’ll get into the country club?’ He asked for a recommendation. He said he was a friend of my son’s. That wasn’t true, though I didn’t know it at the time.”

Ultimately, only Richard Rotenberg can speak to his intentions for the house, and he has refused multiple opportunities to do so. Had anybody involved in the sale known that Rotenberg would demolish the house, they would not have sold it to him. Either way, what is indisputably clear is that numerous parties made extraordinary efforts to inform Richard Rotenberg that he was buying an important house by one of the 20th century’s great architects.

Steve Buchanan is the affable bearded building official who issued the demolition permit. “They came in, they applied for the permit,” he says with a shrug from behind the Rancho Mirage permits counter. “Everything was in order, so I gave it to them. I had no reason not to.” And that’s true: In the matter of demolition permits, Rancho Mirage allowed itself no oversight of their issuance prior to August of 2002. But neither Buchanan nor anyone else in Rancho Mirage city government was prepared for the international outrage that resulted from that lack of oversight.

Rancho Mirage City Council member Richard Kite recalls thinking, “Man, what’ve we done?” Rancho Mirage is heavily dependent upon affluent, educated, and cultured tourism, and the international scope of the anger was a matter of real concern. Kite was chosen to devise a historic preservation ordinance that would, in principle at least, prevent the demolition of another property like the Maslon’s.

What resulted was an ordinance that allows for historic designation of properties, but only with an owner’s consent. Stranger still, an owner can choose to have the designation removed at a later date. Anthony Merchell is a historian of Palm Springs architecture and a register with DOCOMOMO, an international organization devoted to the preservation of modernism. A few weeks prior to a final vote on the ordinance, he ranked it “about a zero on a scale of one to ten.” The Rancho Mirage Historic Preservation Ordinance was passed on April 3, 2003, just over a year after the issuance of a demolition permit for 70-900 Fairway Drive.

In the kitchen of his pitch-perfect Palm Springs 1950s house, Pete Moruzzi shakes his head. Moruzzi considers the preservation battle in Rancho Mirage to have been lost, and he is refocusing the Palm Springs Modern Committee’s efforts toward educating the citizens of Rancho Mirage about the benefits of historic preservation.

As for the Maslons, they seem to have resigned themselves to the loss. “It was a wonderful part of our life, but it’s gone,” James Maslon sighs. “Personally, for me, it’s gone.” Meanwhile, more than a year after the demolition, speculation and gossip continues over Rotenberg’s motive for demolishing the house. One possible motive is that he wanted the Maslon’s rare full-acre lot for redevelopment purposes. In that way, his $850,000 overpayment for the property is not a mistake, but a shrewd decision by an experienced developer knowing a good subdivision when he sees one. By developing half the property for someone else, Rotenberg turns his overpayment into a market price, or maybe even a bargain. “I’m sure he’s going to build a new home for himself, too,” Deirdre Coit seethes.

“But I don’t think he’s going to feel that comfortable as a member of the club if they decide to let him in,” speculates Dr. Jaffe. As of April 2003, no building permits or site plans have been submitted to Rancho Mirage.

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Jennifer Carlquist of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in the research and preparation of this article.