Irene's Adobe: La Querencia

My fascination with Adobe structures has lead me to seek out and photograph as many of them as I can. I have located over 44 Adobes just in the Los Angeles basin that I hope to capture in natural light over the next few years. This summer, I was fortunate enough to actually stay inside two amazing Adobes in Twentynine Palms:  The Hayes Adobe and Irene's Adobe at the 29 Palms Inn located on the west end of the 9,000 year old Oasis of Mara.

I have always been intrigued with the history behind Irene's Adobe since the first time my husband and I stayed in the Bottle Room which is a part of the 29 Palms Inn. The Adobe was built in 1933 by The Stubb Brothers for Gerald Charlton, a landscape architect from British Columbia. Mr. Charlton originally dubbed the Adobe "La Querencia", which is Spanish for a place where one feels safe and at home, a place where you can truly be yourself.

Mr. Charlton's second wife Irene Zimmers Charlton inherited the property and lived there until her death in 1997 at the age of 95. Irene Charlton was a local artist who, along with her first husband Philip Zimmers (also an Architect who designed the Little Church of the Desert), helped in the organization of the Twentynine Palms Gem and Mineral Society.

The Bottle Room and the space next door called the Dark Room, were originally the Adobe's garage. In 1938, Harlow W. Jones established his "Desert Photo Lab" in that very same garage and became Twentynine Palms first official Photographer. Irene used the Bottle Room as an artist studio and was widely know for her beautiful watercolors of the desert landscape. According to the Twentynine Palms Historical Society, from 1956 - 1963, the Adobe was used as an Art Gallery for the Twentynine Palms Artist Guild.

Modern day Twentyniner Pat Rimmington has a wonderful book out titled "The Adobes of Twentynine Palms" if you are interested in further exploration of this subject.

Looking back at the history of Twentynine Palms and photographing these structures of mud that have withstood the test of time due to the love and care in maintaing their existence, has given me a glimpse back in time to a pre-WWII era of pioneers and adventures who had the strength of character to create a home from the ground up, a character which the desert demands.

La Querencia,

Julie Pavlowski Green

September 6, 2014