When a new owner demolished Richard Neutra’s Maslon House in Rancho Mirage in 2002, the loss of the 1962 modernist masterpiece set off an international outcry and galvanized a preservation movement that continues to reshape how communities protect their architectural heritage. More than two decades later, Chicago-based filmmakers Scott Goldstein and Dave Yakir have brought the vanished home back to vivid life in their short documentary, Richard Neutra’s Maslon House. The Coronado Historical Association will host a screening and conversation with the filmmakers, giving island residents a chance to see the film and engage with the enduring questions it raises about memory, preservation, and the places we choose to keep.
Running 29 minutes, the film chronicles the creation and sudden destruction of one of only three homes the Vienna-born architect designed in the Coachella Valley. Built for art collectors Samuel and Luella Maslon on the 12th fairway of Tamarisk Country Club, the six-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot home was a showcase for their remarkable modern art collection, with works by Warhol and Giacometti displayed along the home’s gallery walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a low-slung flat roof with deep overhangs made the home appear to float above its desert setting.
Goldstein and Yakir blend family home movies, archival photographs, new footage, and firsthand interviews to reconstruct the house for audiences who will never step inside it. Interviewees include Neutra scholars Barbara Lamprecht and Adele Cygelman, designer Brad Dunning, photographer David Glomb, preservationists Peter Moruzzi and Craig Traupane, Rancho Mirage Councilmember Lynn Mallotto, author Melissa Riche, and, most movingly, Hilary Maslon, granddaughter of the original owners. The film premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Annenberg Theater during Modernism Week 2025, and was later selected for the Palm Springs International ShortFest, The Provincetown International Film Festival, The Newport Beach Film Festival, The Coronado Island Film Festival, GlobeDocs, and the Thomas Edison Film Festival.
What elevates the film beyond architectural elegy is its insistence that the Maslon story is not an isolated tragedy. The 2002 demolition was entirely legal; no ordinance protected the home. Out of that loss grew Preservation Mirage, the nonprofit that has since helped drive historic surveys and preservation ordinances throughout the region. The documentary makes a quiet but pointed case that any community with architecture worth caring about, Coronado included, faces the same fundamental question: what do we protect, and before it is too late?
Tickets are available now at the museum located at 1100 Orange Avenue or online at coronadohistory.org. Tickets are $15 for members and $20 for non-members. Reservations are required, and please be aware that tickets are nonrefundable as proceeds support CHA’s educational mission. If you have any questions, please email [email protected] or call 619-435-7242.
