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La Plaza Palm Springs is an open-air shopping district in downtown Palm Springs, anchored by the historic Plaza Theatre. It began as Palm Springs Plaza in nineteen thirty-six and helped create a resort-store corridor along Palm Canyon Drive and Indian Canyon Drive.
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The Plaza Spine
La Plaza sits in downtown Palm Springs as an on-street, open-air shopping center, wedged between South Palm Canyon Drive and Indian Canyon Drive. Its divided road, storefronts, and backside lanes make it feel less like a mall and more like a neighborhood stitched from retail blocks. The historic Plaza Theatre anchors the scene, giving the district a movie-palace silhouette amid palm-lined sidewalks. When Palm Springs Plaza opened on November first, nineteen thirty-six, it was among the first Southern California shopping centers built by a single developer with a uniform appearance. Its parking garage rose on three levels and held one hundred forty-one cars, the largest garage in Riverside County. Stand at the historic Plaza Theatre and scan the storefronts along La Plaza.
Resort Stores and Department Stores
Walk along South Palm Canyon Drive and the story turns to resort stores. Bullock's opened a Spanish Colonial-style resort store in the Desert Inn complex in nineteen thirty, and I. Magnin followed at the El Mirador Hotel on December first, nineteen thirty-three. When Bullock's opened a full department store at one hundred fifty-one Palm Canyon Drive in nineteen forty-seven, J. W. Robinson's took the former Bullock's location for its own resort store. After La Plaza was built, the block thickened with full-line stores: Bullock's, J. W. Robinson's at three hundred thirty-three, and Saks Fifth Avenue at four hundred ninety, which opened on October sixteen, nineteen fifty-nine. These storefronts made downtown feel like a miniature Broadway, with desert light replacing the Los Angeles fog. Trace the old store numbers on Palm Canyon Drive and look for the street wall where retail once lined the block.
Malls and Modernism
By nineteen sixty-seven, the retail energy that began at La Plaza had spilled into the Desert Fashion Plaza mall. Saks Fifth Avenue closed its earlier Palm Canyon location and moved into a larger store inside the mall, while Joseph Magnin opened a twenty-six thousand square foot department store in nineteen sixty-nine. Together with Sears at six hundred eleven Palm Canyon Drive, downtown boasted seven department stores for two decades, plus the Palm Springs Mall one and one-half miles to the east, operating from nineteen fifty-nine through two thousand five. That density explains why La Plaza feels like the original core: a pedestrian-scale spine where resort shopping, movie-going, and desert modernism first met. Turn toward the north backside called Tahquitz Canyon and look for the storefront rhythm that defines downtown.