Greetings from Palm Springs: Takeaways from Modernism Week

Marin residents can usually recognize the name Joseph Eichler and associate him with the roughly 1,700 midcentury homes he built in San Rafael. His glass-walled, atrium-centered houses, modest in scale yet expansive in feeling, helped define postwar suburban California.

In Palm Springs, George and Robert Alexander, the father-and-son team behind residential development company Alexander Construction Co., are as well known as the movie stars who once retreated to the area.

“I have...