Leave It to Tom Scheerer—the Decorator’s Decorator— to Imbue an Oceanfront House in Palm Beach With Both a Sense of Place and an Insouciant Charm.
BECKY GOCHMAN FIRST CLIMBED ON A HORSE when she was eight years old and immediately began to beg her parents for one of her own. At 11, exhausted by her nightly tears, they surrendered. As a mother, she spared her own daughters any childhood trauma by lifting them onto horses when they were just 18 months old. As a rider, she’s their role model— she has held the Wellington, Florida, title in the amateur-owner hunter division for riders 36 and over for five years.
Dedicated riders own horses. Becky Gochman owns 20. She keeps them at her farm in Wellington, in a barn so lavishly equipped that other horses dream of living there. But the Wellington riding season lasts only three months, and the farm, designed by Tom Scheerer, wouldn’t work as a year-round residence for a family with school-age children. Palm Beach, just 17 miles away, would do quite nicely.
In Palm Beach, she and her husband, David, took an oceanfront house built in 1925 and, instead of updating it, tore it down. The home next door, though new, looked old, so they hired its architects, Peter Moor and Chris Baker, to build a house that looks as if it belongs in the neighborhood, but on a smaller scale at 4,000 square feet.
And then Scheerer went to work. This was his third project for the Gochmans; before Wellington, he’d transformed a staid Manhattan townhouse into what he describes as a “kooky, off-kilter home out of The Royal Tenenbaums.” Harmony prevailed. “Tom presented me with three different choices, and I tended to choose the one he liked,” Becky recalls.
Denne historien er fra July/August 2019-utgaven av Elle Decor.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra July/August 2019-utgaven av Elle Decor.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
MORE, PLEASE
Eric Hughes joins forces with Standard Architecture to transform two neighboring homes into a sprawling family compound.
SIZED TO FIT
Designer Nannette Brown reimagines a new-build apartment with unexpected depth, character, and texture.
Play It Cool
In balmy Texas, Ashe Leandro brings urbane style and a chill vibe to a home in a historic district.
Mic Drop
For former talk radio star Tom Joyner, Studio Roda creates an oceanfront pleasure pad with out-of-sight views and disco-era glamour.
EYE IN THE SKY
How do you cozy up a Manhattan high-rise? Call designers Hendricks Churchill.
THE JOY OF KØKKEN
In Brooklyn, a writer transforms her kitchen into a space of warmth and connection, blending personal memories with Scandinavian design.
CURTAIN RAISER
ELLE DECOR partners with designers Christine and John Gachot to refresh an iconic lounge at a New York institution, the Metropolitan Opera House.
The Empire Strikes Back - A 19th-century gem in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gets a tour-de-force restoration thanks to Frances Merrill of Reath Design.
Is it possible to simultaneously go back in time and leap forward? This was the challenge a couple set for themselves upon purchasing a salmon-pink 1869 house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Longfellow House, the National Historic Site that served as George Washington's headquarters during the revolution. We loved all the beautiful old details of this house, the homeowner says.
Just Like That, But Cheaper. -One writer tried to replicate a classic ELLE DECOR interior in his apartment. Could he do it for $500?
It was all about the green curtains. In 2008, to my great surprise, I was offered a ninemonth fellowship based in New York City. I had lived there twice before, both times unsuccessfully, meaning I had failed to create any kind of significant social life, and so this was a chance not only to do research for my new novel, but also an opportunity to get things right. I swore I wouldn't let the city break me a third time.
And How! - Decorator Nick Olsen transforms a Sag Harbor home into a Hamptons retreat with an irreverent humor.
If you must go to the Hamptons, however-because it is devilishly good fun, after all-you may notice an apparently modest, low-slung cottage on Sag Harbor's Main Street and think, with a comfortable sort of feeling, Now that is how a house should look. Nestled amid the Botox bars, helipads, and club-staurants, it could almost set the sordid world aright both a rebuke and a solution to the chaos that surrounds it. A real home.
