Elvis’s 'Honeymoon Hideaway' Hits the Market

It’s one of the wildest modern masterpieces in Palm Springs, a town with many wild modern masterpieces. And now the 'Elvis Honeymoon House,' designed by Bill Krisel, can be yours for $9.5 million, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The house, owned since 1989 by Elvis fan M.L. Lewis, is a virtual museum of Elvis, and has operated for years as a tourist attraction. Unlike many mid-century modern homes once owned by stars, including the Frank Sinatra house and the Bob Hope house, which are hidden away or distant, the Elvis house is smack dab in the middle of a mid-century modern neighborhood, Vista Las Palmas, and easy to see.

Elvis, who rented the house for about a year in 1966, celebrated his honeymoon there with Priscilla in May 1967.

The house was designed by Krisel in 1960 for his close friend Bob Alexander, who with his father George built thousands of mid-century modern homes in Palm Springs and the San Fernando Valley. It is the Alexander homes that give the desert so much of its modern flavor – but none are quite as modern as the Elvis house, which was originally called the 'House of Tomorrow' and used to showcase the Alexanders’ – and Krisel’s – work.

The five-bedroom, five-bath home has circular rooms, a circular fireplace, curving stone walls, and a pool.

Bob and his wife Helene were living in one of Krisel’s standard tract Alexander homes elsewhere in town. But Bob, who worshipped his wife, was afraid that if he told Helene about the kind of house he was dreaming about, she might balk. So he cooked up a scheme.

Krisel recalled the inception of the House of Tomorrow in an interview some years back with Eichler Network.

“Why don’t we make a deal?” Bob asked Krisel. “I’m going to build a house in the Vista Las Palmas area and call it the ‘House of Tomorrow,’ and it’s going to be a house that has everything you can have today that people aren’t even thinking of. We’ll have it open to the public, use it for publicity.’

“So I designed this house,” Krisel went on, “but Bob was really the client. And as it started coming out of the ground, when Helene could begin to see what it was, she was there one day and she said, ‘This is fantastic. Why the hell are we living in that tract house when we could be living in a house like this. I love it.’”

“Bob said, ‘Well you could live in this house, you can move in tomorrow.’ He said, ‘It’s yours.’”

And now, dear reader, it can be yours.

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