The Chateaux of My Mind
This morning I am waking up in a lovely French Chateaux on a small tributary of the Loire River. I expect to see a riverboat with wine country tourists lounging on its deck coming past any minute. No, wait, why is there an egret high-stepping through the mangrove roots, they don’t have mangroves in France. Oh yeah, this particular Chateaux is not in the Loire Valley. I am on John’s Island in Vero Beach, Florida and this tributary is a canal that runs into the Indian River that is part of the Intercostal Waterway that runs up and down the length of the East Coast of Florida. I am a guest and Andy and Betsy Forrester’s house, or rather, their transplanted French Chateaux set on this lovely spot. I have rarely been more impressed with a home than I was when I drove up to this place yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, the Hansen’s home in Jupiter, where I stayed the night before was magnificent and both wonderfully appointed with every convenience (not to mention every water sport toy known to man), and the Ward’s home in Wellington, where I stayed the night before that, is lovely and comfortable and set in the horseyest of horsey communities you could ever imagine (the Ward’s are horse people who ride, jump, foxhound and anything else you can do on horseback). But I was, honestly, most surprised to drive up to the Forrester’s yesterday because the replication of the Provençal spirit here is so very acute. The gravel drive (not a pea gravel out of place) and the neatly trimmed hedges combined with the country French architecture making the house and its attendant structures seem old but not in the least worn down is so French that it is hard to imagine it set in Vero Beach, Florida.
As I drove through the community here on John’s Island, a typical gated Florida set-up with a guard booth and electric barriers, the rest of the homes looked nice and neat, but there was nothing to indicate that I would soon be arriving in Avignon. Like many parts of the country, Florida, or at least the East Coast, tends to have houses that look more or less similar. My friends Terry and Paula, who are native New Yorkers (born and bread in the Bronx and spending most of their working lives in Manhattan), built a home in Westchester overlooking the Hudson. That was a modern house in the woods amidst classic northeastern homes. Given the hillside setting, the large lots and the visual shielding of the woods, there is nothing even remotely offensive about the contemporary build. In fact, it feels almost normal to have some diversity in the housing design. Some might think the design diversity actually adds to the value of the neighborhood.
They are now building a house in a community in Palm Beach Gardens on the site of a house they have torn down. That site sits on a marsh on a lot that is somewhat smaller than the northern lot. The houses all around them are what I would call typical affluent Florida homes. Those are homes that are probably 5,000 – 7,000 sf. and are designed as replica Tuscan or Provençal houses done as Americans might do them. I think those houses are the chop suey to Chinese food. They are Americanized houses that are mostly what we derogatorily call McMansions. By contrast, since I have seen Terry and Paula’s house in New York, their home will look very classy and upscale…much more than what’s around them, in my opinion. Their house will just hit the minimum size standard for the community of 3,000 sf by the slightest of margins. When the plans for the house were presented to the community board, they rejected it on the grounds that this contemporary design was too severe and lacking in exterior adornment. One would think they had never seen a Mies van der Rohe or Saarinen structure in the last 90 years.
No one would mistake Andy and Betsy’s house on John’s Island for a Le Corbusier cube house. In fact, no would mistake the house for a McMansion either. I have nothing against McMansions or modern structures. I don’t happen to live in either of those two, but I don’t live in a French country house either. I want to understand why I am so taken with the Provençal Chateaux. I have lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright style house that was 11,000 sf and it was less fun and more difficult that I expected. There are house styles that are more pleasing to the eye than they are to the seat of the pants. FLW was that way for sure. It is certainly easy to live in a McMansion. But a French country house or a modern artistic home only work for a certain lifestyle that may or may not be easy to live with. But then again, how does a house design style affect lifestyle? I think that for me, it changes how I feel every day. For some, design takes a back seat to function. For others, function means nothing without appealing design.
It is said that form follows function. But that does not negate form. I would argue that form can drive some amount of function. What I mean by that is that a French country house may not be the easiest place to live if you are a commuter who lives on a workaday schedule. But maybe if you are a retired banker who wants to kick back and live a more casual lifestyle, a French country house (or a modernist temple for that matter) might just help you do that better.
I think that is what I found so intriguing about Andy and Betsy’s home on John’s Island. The French country Chateaux life is the ideal lifestyle in my mind. If you’ve seen the movie A Good Year with Russell Crowe, that is my dream scenario. I’m a hot-shit successful trading partner in London, living in an apartment version of a McMansion, and I inherit a French country Chateaux, complete with vineyard, and change my life and my lifestyle by selling London and staying on in Provence to take long leisurely lunches out under the arbors as I watch the vines ripen. Who wouldn’t want that? But ultimately, that is the Chateaux of my mind at work and not reality. The truth is that we can find peace and happiness anywhere and in any design configuration. Peace is simply not path dependent, but rather a matter of personal choice.