Hospitality Design: Jessica Pell / Hotel Wren

Kismet might be the most suitable word for how Jessica Pell, founder and principal of Manola Studio, came to co-own Hotel Wren in Twentynine Palms, California. Originally, she was renovating the 1940s motor lodge property, former the Circle C Lodge, for friends who had a boutique hospitality group, but two years in, those friends shifted their business focus and stepped away. Feeling invested in the project by this point, Pell became an accidental hotelier for the first time, in partnership with her frequent collaborator, real estate investor Cyrus Etemad.

What made this transition feel destined, however, was the regular trips Pell made to Joshua Tree National Park as a child. “I remember being enchanced by the landscape and the surreal stillness. Even as a child, it felt like a sacred place,” she says. This reverence informed the hotel’s design.

“There was a vintage rhythm to the existing property that felt worth preserving,” Pell says. She meticulously re-glazed the original steel casement windows, for one. Her team also preserved an old drive-thru carport—a relic of the motor lodge era—and the spatial layout and bones of the property’s 12 generously sized rooms, which are still oriented toward a courtyard and the mountains beyond.

Meanwhile, newly added touches create a home-like feel. The hotel’s updated palette takes inspiration from the desert’s natural tones of bone, clay, adobe pink, and rust and carefully curated vintage furnishings are low-slung, sun-washed, and restrained to let the landscape speak for itself. The design team also converted a newer, out-of-place structure that existed on the site into the hotel’s lobby, furnishing it like a comfy living room.

When it came time to name the hotel, Pell recounts spotting a pair of cactus wrens nesting in a silver cholla on the property. She’d seen many species of bird in the area, but never cactus wrens, and knew of how they cautiously choose where to nest to keep their fledglings safe from predators. “I was thrilled they found their way into our gardens, and at that moment, it felt like a sign that they had chosen this place, and in a quiet way, were giving us permission to do the same.”