Maurice Fatio's Il Palmetto: The Garden

Photo:  Palm Beach Daily News.

In South Florida, where the vegetation can grow so lush, The Devoted Classicist has always been surprised at the relative lack of beautiful gardens.  Althought the grounds surrounding Palm Beach mansions are usually well-tended, the artistic level of landscape design is generally lower than one would expect.  Part of this may have to do with the fact that so many of the houses are used only as winter vacation homes and not the owners' primary residence.  Despite the concentration of wealth, beautiful architecture, and tropical climate, Palm Beach is just not known today for an abundance of remarkable gardens.

The east elevation of Il Palmetto during the occupancy of Janet Annenberg Hooker.
Photo:  Roberto Schezen, PALM BEACH HOUSES

A notable stand-out, however, is the new garden of the estate named Il Palmetto.  When billionaire internet software developer Jim Clark bought the property for $11 million from the estate of Janet Annenberg Hooker, it was in poor condition.  But the 5 1/2 acre property extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intercoastal Waterway, also known as Lake Worth.  (Although bisected by South County Road, a tunnel connects to the separate Beach House).  And perhaps best of all, the property includes the landmark 1930 mansion designed by Maurice Fatio, Treanor & Fatio Architects.  Determined to restore the estate to its former glory, and better, Clark set out on a full renovation of the house, complimented by a spectacular new garden designed by landscape architect Robert E. Truskowski.

As it appeared when occupied by Mrs. Hooker.
Photo:  Christie's Great Estates.

This writer had first met Mr. Truskowski and become familiar with his Laguna Beach-based firm in the 1980s when he designed the gardens of a couple residences whose interiors were designed by Parish-Hadley.  With several field offices and spectacular estate gardens completed nationwide, plus a few international projects, the firm is a leader in residential landscape architecture, as these images reveal.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski.

The property is located at two relatively sharp turns in South Ocean Boulevard, also known as Highway 1A, so there is dense planting along the road.  The driveway entrance, at the short east-west leg of the road called "Widener's Curve", is a handsome pair of iron gates and piers with a degree of discretion.  A short length of driveway leads a pair of entrances flanking a decorative wall feature to a walled motor court.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski.

The motor court contains a simple fountain in the center, with the main entrance to the house straight ahead and a drive-through entrance to the service court to the left.  At the intersection of the wings is a three story tower.  To the left, a series of grass terraces with built-in perspective provide a vista of green to contrast with the hard surfaces.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski.

Going straight through the house, one comes out to a three-sided courtyard with dramatic steps down to the expansive lawn and the Intercoastal Waterway on the right.  In the center of this courtyard is another fountain, again a spray of water, but this time in a circular pool.  Straight ahead of that is a Loggia, open on both sides but capable of being given a windbreak from the ocean with glass retracting within steel frames.

Photo:  Dias Brothers.

The swimming pool terrace is beyond the Loggia.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowsi.

The swimming pool was completely reworked, keeping the original shape, but re-surfaced with brilliant cobalt blue tile.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowsi.

Below the swimming pool terrace, another courtyard focuses on a large sculpture set within a rectangular pool.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski

Another view of the same space, showing a closer look at a different angle.  A tennis court occupied the space previously.

Photo:  Dias Brothers.

The path to the new Boat House passes by magnificent specimen trees.  Some were rescued from sites being cleared for re-development and delivered by barge to the site.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski

Photo:  www.landscapeonline.com

The second photo of almost the same view shows the profusion of staghorn ferns (platycerium) growing from the trunk of the tree and the extensive use of bromeliads (bromeliacae) for low maintenance year-around color.

Photo:  Robert E. Truskowski

Another path shows the extensive use of coquina stepping stones and water features.

A view from the Intercoastal Waterway shows an expanse of lawn terraced up to the house.

Photo:  about 1932-34, Robert Yarnell Richie
Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries,
DeGolyer Library.

Architect Maurice Fatio
Photo:  PALM BEACH HOUSES.

Architect Maurice Fatio might not be well-known outside of Palm Beach today, but he was nationally famous in the 1920s and 30s.  Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1897 and arriving in New York City in 1920, he was named at a 1923 society bazaar as the most popular architect in New York according to Shirley Johnson's book PALM BEACH HOUSES.   First working for noted architect Harrie T. Lindeberg, he teamed up with William A. Treanor, twenty years his senior who had worked for Lindeberg for ten years, to establish Treanor & Fatio Architects.  In 1925, he moved to Palm Beach and began designing houses in the Mediterranean style, usually blending together Romanesque, Florentine, and Venetian influences as well.  One of these houses, built for the Wolcott Blairs and known as much for the interior design by Ruby Ross Wood (and assistant Billy Baldwin) as much as the architecture, is featured in a previous post here.

The main entrance as it appeared during the occupancy by Mrs. Hooker.
This is one of this writer's favorite doorways in all of Palm Beach.
Photo:  Roberto Schezen, PALM BEACH HOUSES.

Il Palmetto was an important commission, a 42 room mansion with nine master bedrooms built at the height of the Great Depression that employed hundreds for months.  Fatio later designed Palm Beach houses in the Georgian Revival style (as he had done in New York), the French Norman style, the British Colonial style, the Regency Revival style, and even Contemporary.   He was immensely social, constantly attending luncheons and dinner parties to promote his architectural practice.  Handsome and an immpeccable dresser, he was also known for his tango.  He is even mentioned in the lyrics of a Cole Porter song. Sadly, he died of cancer at the age of 47 in 1943.  More about the work of this talented architect can be found in the book MAURICE FATIO: PALM BEACH ARCHITECT.  (Both of these books may be purchased at a significant discount through The Devoted Classicist Library and the links accessed by clicking the titles).

Portrait of Joseph Early Widener by Augustus Johns, 1921.
National Gallery of Art.

Il Palmetto was built as the winter vacation home of Joseph Early Widener, 1871-1943.  (His wife Ella had died the previous year and their children, Peter A.B. Widener, 2nd, and Josephine "Fifi" Widener Leidy Holden Wichfeld Bigelow were grown by that time).  Widener was heir to a vast real estate and transportation fortune.  He grew up in his parents' immense mansion designed by Horace Trumbauer,  Lynnewood Hall on 300 acres in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania;  it continued to be his residence after marriage and was the place of his death after several years of ill health.  Widener's older brother had perished on the Titanic in 1912, leaving him to inherit the bulk of the family fortune in 1915, and making him the country's 20th richest man.  He attended Harvard University and studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, but his main interest was dogs and horses.  In 1931, he renovated Hialeah Park, a lavishly landscaped thoroughbred racetrack still recognized today for its beauty and hundreds of pink flamingos.  But his best known contribution is his being a founding benefactor of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  His donation of the Widener Collection, consisting of 2,000 paintings, sculptures and decorative arts objects was put on display in 1942. 

An interior doorway at Il Palmetto as it appeared
during the occupancy by Mrs Hooker.
Photo:  Roberto Schezen, PALM BEACH HOUSES.

Although Jim Clark may have spent more than double his initial purchase price to improve Il Palmetto, it has been universally thought to be a wise investment.  The estate is one of the most sparkling of the Palm Beach jewels, a town where such estates are still coveted as a desirable example of one's worth.  In 2009, Clark, 65, married 'Sports Illustrated' swimsuit model Kristy Hinze, 29, his fourth wife, on the beach at Necker Island, the private retreat of Sir Richard Branson, part of a four day celebration that also included Clark's $100 million yacht.  Il Palmetto has regularly been the site of events hosted by the Clarks to benefit various charities.  Unlike some of the other significant residences that have been featured on this blog, Il Palmetto is not threatened any time in the near future.

Ruby Ross Wood

Ruby Ross Wood's decoration of the Dining Room of Swan House, the Edward H. Inman residence, Atlanta, features magnificent antique Chinese hand-painted wallpaper and dramatic silk-taffeta curtains.  Although author Adam Lewis described them as horizontal striped, the word from the museum curator, via Helen Young at Whitehaven blog, is that they are indeed plaid.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

One of the great decorating talents that helped to shape interior design as we know it is Ruby Ross Wood.  Born Ruby Ross Pope in 1880 in Monticello, Georgia, and growing up in Augusta as the daughter of a successful cotton broker, she moved to New York City in the early 1900s to continue her freelance writing career for newspapers and magazines.  In 1910, she was hired as a ghostwriter for a series of articles for The Delineator magazine to publish the collection of lectures on interior decorating that Elsie de Wolfe had given to members of The Colony Club, an elite women's organization whose Stanford White-designed clubhouse she decorated in 1905.  (Not to be confused with the current clubhouse designed by architects Delano & Aldrich, this was located at 120 Madison Avenue, and is now home to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts).  The next year, she rewrote the articles in cooperation with de Wolfe and sold them to Ladies Home Journal.  In 1913, the articles were again adapted to create the book The House in Good Taste, a compilation of practical and relatively inexpensive suggestions that proved to be very influential in re-shaping tastes in residential interiors for the twentieth century.

The legendary decorator Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

After the financial failures of her own book The Honest House and a decorating firm, Modernist Studio, she accepted a job from Nancy McClelland at Au Quatrieme, the fourth floor antiques and decorating shop in Wanamaker's department store.  When McClelland left in 1918 to open her own decorating firm, she recommended that Mrs. Wallace F. Goodnow, as she was known then, would become the new manager, an experience that would prove to be invaluable in providing connections with important trade sources and wealthy clients.  Divorcing her husband in 1923, she married Chalmers Wood the next year.  With the financial backing of her socially-connected stock broker husband, she took advantage of the departure for France of New York's then-reining Queen of Decorating, Elsie de Wolfe, and opened her own business as Ruby Ross Wood.

The summer home of Chalmers and Ruby Ross Wood in Syosset, Long Island, New York, was designed by architect William Adams Delano of the noted architectural firm Delano & Aldrich with contributions by Mrs. Wood.  Built 1927-28 on 43 acres off South Woods Road (Syosset-Woodbury Road), it was demolished in 1995.
Photo:  THE ARCHITECTURE OF DELANO & ALDRICH by Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker.

Decorating her own apartment as a showcase for her design skills, and moving every year, she soon built a profitable business from former customers of Au Quatrieme and old money connections of her husband.  Published photos of their country house on Long Island, Little Ipswich designed by architects Delano & Aldrich, also enhanced her reputation.

The Stair Hall at Swan House as decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.  The sitting room through the open doors is labeled "Morning Room" on the construction plans but would commonly known as a Living Room.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

The best known design by Ruby Ross Wood, however, is the Swan House, Atlanta, now open as a museum.  The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Inman, heir to a cotton brokerage and real estate fortune making him one of the richest men in Georgia, is a classical mansion on 28 acres in the fashionable neighborhood of Buckhead.  Commissioned of the Atlanta architectural firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler, associate Philip Trammell Shutze is generally credited as responsible for the architectural design.  But the whole house was done in close collaboration with both Mrs. Inman and Mrs. Wood.  Although the exterior shows Shutze's influence by the Italian Renaissance, Mrs. Inman's love of early English Georgian design, and William Kent in particular, is given preference inside.  The three worked together according to Adam Lewis, author of The Great Lady Decorators, on all the interior architectural details (with the exception of the library whose millwork was executed in England).  It is the Dining Room, in particular that showcases Mrs. Wood's talent.  Antique Chinese wallpaper, as advocated by Elsie de Wolfe, gives life to the room filled with English furniture.  And the Ruby Ross Wood signature of color is given by the bold plaid silk taffeta curtains.

The winter residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wolcott Blair in Palm Beach, Florida, was designed by architect Maurice Fatio.  Located at 1960 South Ocean Boulevard, it was demolished in the early 2000s.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

Ross met Billy Baldwin in 1929, but the effects of the country's financial difficulties prevented her from hiring him until 1935.  At that time, one of Ruby Ross Wood's finest commissions, the winter home of Ellen Yullie and Wolcott Blair, was nearing completion in Palm Beach, Florida.  Wolcott was a successful stockbroker whose family owned the Merchant's Bank of Chicago and Ellen's father had been the president of the American Tobacco Company;  their family fortunes were not effected by The Great Depression.

A view of the terrace outside the Living Room, believed to be on the west (Lake Worth) side, of the Wolcott Blair residence with the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

No expense was spared for the new house designed by Palm Beach architect Maurice Fatio.  The center of the "H" plan house was the Living Room with five arched windows on each long side that could descend below the floor level using an ingenious water-pump system.  This allowed an unencumbered connection with the garden terraces on both sides of the room.  The view to the west included the pool and a lawn to Lake Worth, and the view to the east, across the lawn to the beach (via a tunnel under South Ocean Boulevard) and the Atlantic Ocean.

A view of the Living Room of the Wolcott Blair residence, Palm Beach, decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

Reinforcing the indoor-outdoor relationship of the room, white lacquered tubs filled with tall white lilies were placed between each of the windows.  A comfortable but sparse arrangement of furniture allowed the big room to be used for a variety of activities, including serving as a passage.  In Billy Baldwin Remembers the decorator notes that the walls were "buff, pale, almost not there at all.  The trim was purest white, and the floors ancient Cuban marble the color of parchment."  Because of a shortage in the delivery of the marble, a wide border of bleached cypress was employed as a flooring border around the room, a successful compensation that Baldwin credited to Wood's ingenuity.

Another view of the Living Room of the Wolcott Blair residence, Palm Beach, decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

The upholstery fabrics were either white or tan with cream welting, and several chairs were slipcovered in what Baldwin referred to as "Elsie de Wolfe's famous leopard chintz".  Sofa slipcovers and curtains were a heavy-textured beige cotton from Sweden.  A pair of stripped pine cabinets flank the pair of doors at one end of the room, contributing to the "quiet no-colors" as Baldwin described the scheme.  A pale fruitwood Louis XV writing table was in the center of the room, topped with a scalloped cap of honey-brown leather edged with white carpet binding tape. The lighting was supplied by white table lamps and four carved wood torcheres in the form of palm trees.  The whole effect was an enormous success and led to other decorating commissions in Palm Beach, including several for members of the Wanamaker family.


A party at the home of James Amster in New York City's famed Amster Yard complex.  From left, the butler (with back to camera), James Amster, Marian Hall, Ruby Ross Wood (seated), Billy Baldwin, William Pahlman, and Elizabeth Draper.  Although there are two chandeliers, note the narrow width of the room as evidenced by the placement.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

 Adam Lewis states in The Great Lady Decorators that Ruby Ross Wood was the top decorator in New York City from 1935 to 1942, when Baldwin was drafted into the military.  After the war, Baldwin worked for a year for Mrs. John Jessup, the leading Palm Beach decorator.  In 1946, he returned to New York to work again with Mrs. Wood who had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  She died in 1950 and Baldwin continued the business only long enough to complete the current projects.  Adam Lewis also contends that Wood and Baldwin were the most celebrated in American interior decorating, without equal until Mrs. Henry Parish, 2nd, and Albert Hadley formed their partnership, Parish-Hadley, Inc.  This Wood-Baldwin association and the Palm Beach Blair residence has significance in the next post of The Devoted Classicist, with this essay acting as a prelude of sorts.

Many thanks go to JANSEN author James Archer Abbott who is also a noted authority on Billy Baldwin for directing me to the Palm Beach home of the Wolcott Blairs.  And also thanks go to my very talented Atlanta blogging colleagues Barry of The Blue Remembered Hills, Jennifer of The Peak of Chic, and Helen of Whitehaven for consultation on Swan House.


Adam Lewis's book with forward by Bunny Williams The Great Lady Decorators, The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 published by Rizzoli, New York, 2009, is available for purchase at a discount of the regular retail price here.   Although Billy Baldwin Remembers is out of print, vintage copies may be purchased here.  Reproductions of the Elsie de Wolfe and Ruby Ross Wood collaboration The House in Good Taste can be purchased here.  Both The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich by Peter Pennoyer and Maurice Fatio:  Palm Beach Architect by Kim I. Mockler can be purchased here.

Maison Jansen: The Most Influential Decorators of the 20th Century

One of the many great things about the holiday season is the launch of wonderful new books.  There are a number of new titles in decorative arts by friends and acquaintances, but they have not yet made it to book store shelves in Middle America;  I hope to blog about them soon, though.  First, I will present a 2006 gem, JANSEN by James Archer Abbott from Acanthus Press' 20th Century Decorator Series with Mitchell Owens, Series Editor.  All the images shown here are taken from this book.  The photo above shows the Library of the Madrid home of the March banking family, overseen by then-head of the firm, Pierre Delbee.

In full disclosure, James Abbott is a valued friend of almost twenty years, since we were classmates in the Attingham Summer School in England.  In addition to authoring several exceptional books, he has been the curator/director of a number of great house museums, and he is a talented artist as well as all-around Good Guy.  I was an excited youngster when First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave a televised tour of the sophisticated improvements to the White House, many with the input of Stephane Boudin of Jansen, we were later to learn.  I became familiar with Maison Jansen as a teen, seeing their work credited in library books featuring European architecture and interior design.  I really became a fan, however, after seeing their designs published in 1971 for the four day celebration of the 2,500th Anniversary of the Empire at the ruins of Persepolis, Iran, as shown in the model above.  Jansen designs have often be inspirations for my own projects and my fascination with the Kennedy White House decoration has been enriched with conversations with James over the years with my knowledge of Sister Parish's valuable contributions.  I was not disappointed when JANSEN was published.

 

I am writing about Maison Jansen because there are still many design professionals and enthusiasts that are unfamiliar with the noted inteior design firm.  In James A. Abbott's JANSEN, he states that Maison Jansen was the most famous and influential interior decorating company of the 20th century.  I resisted accepting that claim at first, but I fully embraced it after reading the book.  The Jansen client list was a very diverse international group;  most of them powerful and all were rich.  With headquarters in Paris, there were eventually offices or boutiques in Buenos Aires, London, Cairo, Alexandria, Havana, New York, Prague, Sao Paulo, Rome, Milan, and Geneva.

Jayne (Mrs. Charles B.) Wrightsman, is shown above, in 1959, in the Library of her house in Palm Beach, Florida, as refurbished by Stephane Boudin of Maison Jansen.  The original 1917 house known as Blythedunes was designed by H. Hastings Mundy for Robert Dun Douglas whose family founded Dun & Bradstreet.  In 1930, it was sold to Harrison Williams, a utilities magnate who was once considered one of the world's richest men, and his wife Mona, a renown beauty, who hired architect Maurice Fatio and decorator Syrie Maugham to restyle the house into one of the most stylish of its time.  Financial reverses led to the sale to multimillionaire oilman Charles Wrightsman and his second wife Jayne who had become a serious student of decorative arts, especially those associated with 18th century France.  To make the house her own and satify her own interests, Mrs Wrightsman hired Jansen who paneled three rooms in period 18th century woodwork, altered and augmented as necessary in their own workshops, and floored four rooms in parquet of royal provenance.  The dazzling 18th century handpainted Chinese wallpaper installed by Syrie Maugham remained in the Drawing Room, but a Louis XV marble chimneypiece, set against a floor-to-ceiling framed mirror, replaced a larger baronial English fireplace.  Museum quality antique furniture was supplemented by handmade new furniture, also from the Jansen workshops, and the decor complimented the Wrightsmans' collection of Impressionist paintings.  After Boudin's death in 1967, other designers were called upon for maintenance and updating, notably Vincent Fourcade. 

When the house was sold in 1984 to Leslie Wexner of The Limited and Victoria's Secret, some of the antiques and art were divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Wrightsmans' Manhattan apartment.  So-called lesser pieces were sold at a celebrated auction by Sotheby's New York, an eye-opening event I experienced first hand with "decorative" and "second hand" furnishings selling for record prices.  Wexner demolished the famed house on six acress at 513 North County Road with 600 ft of ocean frontage, causing such an uproar from locals, that he abandoned plans to build a new house (designed by my former employer BeyerBlinderBelle) and decided against having a vacation house in Palm Beach after all.  Jayne Wrightsman, b. 1920, who introduced Boudin to Jackie Kennedy, still lives in a palatial, full-floor, art and antiques-filled apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue, one of New York City's most desirable addresses.

And the Wrightsmans are just one of the many clients and projects profiled in the book!  There is also a sequel of sorts, Jansen Furniture, to be reviewed in a future post.  Both are highly recommended for anyone interested in interior design.


Both Jansen books by James Archer Abbott are available at discount pricing with the option of free shipping through The Devoted Classicist Library in affiliation with Amazon here.