Herbert W. Burns started a renaissance in Palm Springs without even knowing it.

The architect’s 1955 Village Manor Inn was reinvented in 2001 as the Orbit In by owners/entrepreneurs Christy Eugenis and Stan Amy, beginning an architectural preservation revolution of Palm Springs’ modernist architecture. This wave of preservation spawned what is now a global appreciation for the city’s architecture through annual events like Modernism Week.

Burns, who passed away in 1988 at age 91, is a part of a small architectural fraternity that includes the likes of William Krisel, Donald Wexler, E. Stewart Williams, Hugh Kaptur, and Albert Frey, who are attributed to launching the Desert Modernism movement in Palm Springs.

To celebrate Burns’ contribution to Palm Springs’ enviable architectural cache of modernism, the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation created an 84-page tribute journal, The Design of Herbert W. Burns.

Keylon’s book is among the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of Burns’ life and career to date.