A Palm Springs home designed by modernist architect Albert Frey for the postwar Bel Vista development is on the market for $995,000.

Completed in 1946, the house has 1,110 square feet of living space with three bedrooms and one bathroom. Although modest by today’s standards, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a Palm Springs Class 1 Historic Site with Mills Act annual property tax savings.

The property, “Bel Vista #2,” is one of the 15 identical homes Frey designed in partnership with John Porter Clark. Each one is flipped and rotated with staggered setbacks to distinguish one from the other. Culver Nichols and Sally Stevens developed the tract as affordable family housing for the masses, including elected leaders, educators and utility workers.

While many of these compact homes have been significantly altered over the years, this one has remained intact thanks to the current owner.

Todd Hays, a Coldwell Banker Realty agent listing the house, wanted to get it out of the hands of buyers who saw it only as a teardown.

“When I was going through this house, multiple people there were talking about scraping the lot or tearing the house down except for one wall and dramatically altering the house,” he said. “I began to realize that if I don’t buy this, it will never look like this again. And I wanted to save it.”

Records show Hays bought the property in March 2015 for $376,000. He listed it in October 2022 for $1.1 million, dropping the price twice to its current ask. It’s the second of three homes in the tract he’s purchased to restore and renovate based on Frey’s original drawings.

In the case of this house, most of the fixes were cosmetic.

Hays replaced doors and windows to match the originals and cleaned up the exterior stucco. The interior was repainted an original light green as seen on the trim, cabinetry and new tile in the kitchen and the bathroom. Period-appropriate fixtures, cork floors and wall panels also were added.

The concrete slab flooring that runs throughout was polished.

Where the wall furnace once stood, there’s a built-in bookcase. The house has always had abundant closet space and seven exterior doors that allow all but the bathroom direct access to the outdoors, including two in the front bedroom. French doors open the dining room to the attached carport that doubles as a covered patio.

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The curved corrugated fence installed along the perimeter nods to the curved block wall that Frey designed just outside the laundry room. A swimming pool and spa are among the additions.

Frey, who died in 1998 at 95, was a Swiss-born architect who lived and worked in Palm Springs. His notable projects include the Palm Springs City Hall and the Aerial Tramway Valley Station with Clark.

The Bel Vista affordable housing tract built in 1945 was his only subdivision.

Hays will open his house at 1520 E. Tachevah Drive for showings from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 28.