The Harold Matzner
Estate
The preeminent Palm Springs address above Old Las Palmas. Available together for the first time ever.
The Harold Matzner Estate occupies a private promontory above Old Las Palmas where the San Jacinto range rises directly behind the compound and the full sweep of the Coachella Valley opens below — a position no other residential address in the desert shares.
Nearly an acre and a half of assembled ground, comprising three structures, nearly 16,000 square feet, eleven bedrooms, sixteen bathrooms, and multiple pools and spas across two fully realized estates and a guesthouse.
A walk through the estate
555 N Patencio Road
Architecture by Laszlo Sandor, 1982. Interiors by Steve Chase. A second layer by Jack E. Lowrance for the May 1983 feature in Architectural Digest.
The main residence at 555 North Patencio was designed in 1982 by Palm Springs architect Laszlo Sandor, with interiors by Steve Chase — the celebrated Rancho Mirage designer whose work defined the aesthetic language of desert luxury for a generation.
Its architecture is uncluttered and horizontal, built around a single organizing principle: light. Raked plaster walls move through the interior, their texture alive at every hour as the desert sun crosses the compound — catching at dawn along the entrance hall, settling into warmth across the great room by afternoon, receding at dusk to something quieter and more considered.
For all its scale, the residence lives with a remarkable intimacy — soaring volumes that draw inward rather than expand outward. The great room opens entirely to the terrace through a retractable wall of glass, dissolving the boundary between interior and desert. A sunken conversation space anchors the living room, oriented toward the wide opening to the mountain beyond. Stone floors carry throughout, a Steinway anchoring the living room alongside Asian art and antiquities accumulated over four decades with a collector's deliberateness.
The Guesthouse
The guesthouse, finished to the standard of both residences, offers a world entirely its own — private, self-contained, and quietly removed from the life of the compound. It was here that the film festival's most celebrated guests found their desert. Among them, Cate Blanchett.
575 N Patencio Road
A fully resolved estate in its own right — its architectural language distinct, its conviction equal. The entrance hall rises to a sweeping curved staircase; a grand piano centers a raised circular platform below a rain chandelier. The great room reaches double height, the valley visible through glass on three sides.
The master bath — curved black stone, a suspended rain shower open to a skylight above, a slit window framing the palm canopy and valley beyond — carries the same architectural seriousness as everything around it. One room is carved into the boulder face of the mountain itself, a stone fireplace set into the rock, the terrace visible through a full width of glass beyond.
Harold Matzner chaired the Palm Springs International Film Festival for more than two decades, contributed more than $85 million to the valley he called home, and earned the title Mr. Palm Springs from a city that understood precisely what it owed him. Of everything this desert had to offer, he chose this ground — and held it for nearly forty years.
- Offered at
- $19,500,000
- Interior
- 15,975 SF
- Land
- 1.49 Acres
- Structures
- Three
- Bedrooms
- Eleven
- Bathrooms
- Sixteen
- Water Features
- Multiple Pools & Spas
- Access
- Gated Entrances
Three structures, plotted
Available for the first time
ever.
Private showings by appointment. All inquiries are received in confidence.